There is a strange adage about giving certain players a blank cheque. Never understood that. We've seen what happens when you do that. Sure, the best players should be rewarded for their play and value to the club. Competitive, Cup winning teams have depth and their top guys are on good deals.
Yup. It's always been about a much required defense upgrade. They needed two top 4 d-men and solved half the issue while stabilizing Bouchard's development. Finding a quality veteran two-way defender with high hockey smarts and structured game has been missing to run with wild horse Nurse.
I admit I have reservations still with Bouchard. He has some better skills than Barrie for sure, but still struggles mightily. Dropping a huge contract on a guy like that is a risk just as much as Nurse was. Let's not forget Tyson Barrie led the league in points for defencemen one year playing with these guys.
You're a numbers guy I believe. If so I am finding your reasoning in this regard to be highly confusing. Suppose that the Oilers could find a back up who is better than Campbell for $1M. Even if they had $2.6M in dead cap space from his buyout they would still have $1.4M more space to spend for improvements elsewhere than they would with Campbell in that role. How is that not a better use of the cap??? Now you can argue that Campbell will bounce back but I don't think the organization sees it that way. I'd be quite shocked if Campbell is an Oiler in September.
We are 3 years away from all that being on the books though. We have everyone under the same deal next year. The year after that Drai and Bouch kick in the year after that McDavid. Not like it all happens at once next year.
Happy to pay him, only noting the cautionary tales of the past. Perhaps we can bridge him somehow for the final couple kicks at the can.
Bouchard will get better defensively too. A lot of his mistakes are fixable things. He just needs to learn to recognize danger better and be more assertive when he does. The rest of his defensive game has improved by leaps so far and he’s still a young guy. His issues can improve with experience.
He's the youngest of our core players and the least experienced. This run should be great for him to learn from for the future.
So- a better way, sometimes an easier way, is to look at dead cap as reduced cap space. So, say in your example, you buy out Campbell and his cap penalty is 2.6M. Say the overall cap is at 90M. You are immediately handcuffing yourself because you have 87.4M to fill out your roster and your competing with teams, let’s say Florida, who have a 90M cap to work with. You’re handicapping yourself for 6 years (length of the buyout). So, through McDavid’s prime years you have been trying to win a cup with a smaller cap than many of the top contenders. What does that mean- well- 2.6M accrued to the deadline is like an 8M player. Ad in retention and you could add two very good players. For a real life example - Neal’s 1.9M accrued to the deadline and the 2 mill they had could have gotten a Tanev (if Calgary dealt to us- just using it as an example) and Guentzal.
At the same time, if you are paying Jack Campbell 3.9 or whatever to play in the AHL, that’s reducing your cap by 3.9mill and that’s worse. Thats dead cap.
To me the key thing is that there’s no rush to extend Bouchard right now. He’s under contract next year and still a RFA after so they’ve got control. The biggest problem with Nurse is that they extended him a year out coming off of a career year, before I’m offering 9-10+ for Bouchard I wanna see him do it again. Preferably with a different partner too, since Ekholm is already 34 so realistically you can only expect him to be able to maintain the top pairing level that he’s at for another 3/4 years realistically.
He didn't.. he has however proven that he is not a AHL/NHL tweener anymore
Let’s look at this objectively. Jack Campbell had a .880 save % last year in 36 games. Stuart Skinner this year had an .893 this year. Stuart Skinner gave you last year Jack Campbell performance. The difference between Jack Campbell being a .917 save % goalie is 1 save a game. Can Campbell find 1 more save a game under Knob’s defensive system? If you think the answer is yes, than burying him in the AHL is stupid and buying him out is even dumber. Campbell’s “unplayable” year is what Skinner gave the Oilers this year. Having Campbell be your starter next year, at the very least, puts the team in the very same position as this year. Difference is Campbell is a proven playoff performer. So, tell me, why would you buy him out? Problem is too many people rely on perception. Campbell was sent down purely due to contract.
Keith gave up about a million.
Campbell isn’t an NHL goalie. He has proven that. Again.
I think the suits upstairs haven't slept in weeks trying to figure out how to pitch Draisaitl and Bouchard in the coming weeks. Zero cap for a big fish like that.
So your counter to my point was a laughing emoji? Cool. You’re on my ignore list now. Also, Campbell’s last year numbers were the same as Skinner’s this year. But let’s ignore that
If he was an NHL goalie he would have been playing instead of Pickard.
Keith actually gave up $1.5M to spend more time with his son. I do agree that he was probably aware that his cap cost was a burden. But the situations are quite different. Keith was probably ready to hang them up.
