This seems to be a good year to get a goalie. There are several good candidates out there and not that many buyers. How many teams out there are really looking, and would offer a good chance at being starter?
San Jose, Edmonton, Buffalo, maybe Philly and Arizona.
Last years was a much better year. Miller, Hiller and Halak were all available at the end of the season. Two of them signed in Western Canada and the other signed the first low-end starting goalie contract that was offered to him.
This offseason there isn't any goalie openly available as good as any of those 3. In fact, Niemi is the only goalie hitting free agency that has any sort of starter experience, and has barely kept that status from an above average backup in Stalock. There aren't even any starters that are really getting pushed out from young, emerging backups at this point. It's still too early for Lehner, Allen, Gibson and Vasilevskiy to command the #1.
Even next year looks better with Ward, Hiller and Andersen's contracts running out, and a higher possibiliy of young goalies like Lehner making Anderson available and Vasilevskiy making Bishop available.
This is a terrible year to find a goalie.
I'd be shocked if the Oilers could do any better than find another Ben Scrivens, god knows there's always a bounty full of sketchy unproven 1Bs out there. Jones, Tokarski, Raantta, Talbot.
And it'll be a surprise to nobody when such a goaltender fails in our system with our defence. MacT has been quite adament that nothing major will be changing with our defense going into next year, the same defense that's allowed the 2nd most goals in the West. As if a meddling backup can fix that.
