Player Discussion Ty Emberson

[McHelpus]

I'd rather have Emberson as a bottom pairing guy and build him up. Throwing him in the top 4D with 30 games experience is very delusional.

 

[oobga]

That simply won't happen with Nurse as their partner.

Don't think a long term solution has been on this roster at any point in Nurse's career. There were periods of good fortune, like the last week of finals last year. Periods where Nurse's play was masked by McDavid dominance as Nurse got the lions share of McDavid time, but you could still break down his ice time and see how much he was struggling without McDavid pushing play for him. Maybe little spurts with Ceci and Barrie, but nothing that lasted so long you were confident you would stick with it.

Chia passed on the task to Holland. Holland passed it on to Bowman, and gave a Nurse 9.25M unmovable, buyout proof deal to ensure we had no choice but to somehow find the perfect complimentary player for Nurse for our 2nd D pair isn't a weak link. And now we pray that Bowman somehow knows what that player needs to be, and can get it.

 

[ManofSteel55]

I'd rather have Emberson as a bottom pairing guy and build him up. Throwing him in the top 4D with 30 games experience is very delusional.

That's what happens in a perfect world. Unfortunately, we don't have a 2RD. So it's either him or Stecher. I'm not sure who the better option is.

 

[K1984]

Don't think a long term solution has been on this roster at any point in Nurse's career. There were periods of good fortune, like the last week of finals last year. Periods where Nurse's play was masked by McDavid dominance as Nurse got the lions share of McDavid time, but you could still break down his ice time and see how much he was struggling without McDavid pushing play for him. Maybe little spurts with Ceci and Barrie, but nothing that lasted so long you were confident you would stick with it.

Chia passed on the task to Holland. Holland passed it on to Bowman, and gave a Nurse 9.25M unmovable, buyout proof deal to ensure we had no choice but to somehow find the perfect complimentary player for Nurse for our 2nd D pair isn't a weak link. And now we pray that Bowman somehow knows what that player needs to be, and can get it.

And this is the difficult thing. It's very possible that we acquire just the right d man on paper, only for the pair to flop due to Nurse's ineptitude. He is not an easy player to play with.

I guess in that case you could just play Kulak with the new acquisition (assuming that player is a driver) and probably be fine. But then you have Nurse making a mess with someone else on the bottom pair probably.

 

[ottawah]

I agree, honestly. I’m still pissed we went back to Nurse-Ceci in the finals when Nurse-Kulak worked against Dallas.

Not sure I'd say that about the Dallas series

Nurse Kulak, 47 minutes, 1 GF, 3GA
Nurse Dehairnais, 35 minutes, 0 GF, 3GA
Nurse Ceci, 33 minutes, 2 GF, 1GA


Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have gone back to Ceci-Nurse either, but Kulak did notably worse when paired with Nurse. Well, as did Dehairnais and Ceci so you cannot put that all on Kulak.

 

[oobga]

Not sure I'd say that about the Dallas series

Nurse Kulak, 47 minutes, 1 GF, 3GA
Nurse Dehairnais, 35 minutes, 0 GF, 3GA
Nurse Ceci, 33 minutes, 2 GF, 1GA


Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have gone back to Ceci-Nurse either, but Kulak did notably worse when paired with Nurse. Well, as did Dehairnais and Ceci so you cannot put that all on Kulak.

I wouldn't just isolate that one series.

Nurse + Ceci xGA/60 was 3.81 in the playoffs
Nurse + Kulak xGA/60 was 1.46
Nurse + Broberg was 4.4 xGA/60

They did get scored on, all in games we won. The complete chaos though that surrounded Nurse in the first 2 rounds when he was working on a minus record, and in the finals was gone for most of that Dallas series. Nurse is lucky that the chaos was countered by Skinner spinning on his head in the finals which let us make that series more entertaining than a sweep. The only guy in the playoffs that we saw Nurse play some non-endless disaster hockey with was Kulak.

There was a very good reason Knob resorted to pushing Kulak out of his comfort zone for the week or so. We all saw the impending disaster that the Nurse pair was looking like. He likely experiences way more than 3 GA the rest of that series if we kept him with Ceci or Vinny. Dallas was not a team that was going to pass up targeting such an obvious liability.

 

[5 Mins 4 Ftg]

I'd rather have Emberson as a bottom pairing guy and build him up. Throwing him in the top 4D with 30 games experience is very stupid.

Fixed.

 

[brentashton]

That's what happens in a perfect world. Unfortunately, we don't have a 2RD. So it's either him or Stecher. I'm not sure who the better option is.

I’d run Stecher with Nurse and Embo with Kulak. Stecher has NHL experience to help ride out the inevitable Nurse brain farts. Let Emberson play with Kulak and get confident with the team and systems.

 

[OiledUp]

Didn't even look like an NHLer in game one; mediocre positioning, weak on pucks, iffy passing and puckhandling. Hopefully just jitters and he has a bounce back game tonight with Kulak.

 

[nexttothemoon]

In fairness to Emberson... Skinner (both of them).. might as well have been AHL players as well.

The entire top 6 looked weak and ineffective out there. The $9.25 million dman on Emerson's pairing might as well have been a player just up from Bako as well. Would Gleason have looked any worse... probably not.

Bright side is there's a lot of room to improve from that shitshow and we know there's players here that can be much, much better than they showed vs Winnipeg. I'd much rather have all those issues in game #1 of the season rather than game #1 of the playoffs so they have 81 more games to get the stink off the team and kill this hangover that they are going through.

 

[Bryanbryoil]

He's drawing in again tonight on the 3rd pairing next to Kulak. That is where he belongs right now. Putting him (or any inexperienced player) with Nurse is a recipe for disaster right now. I think that he is a very toolsy player that should start gaining traction if his job description is simplified a bit.

 

[guymez]

He's drawing in again tonight on the 3rd pairing next to Kulak. That is where he belongs right now. Putting him (or any inexperienced player) with Nurse is a recipe for disaster right now. I think that he is a very toolsy player that should start gaining traction if his job description is simplified a bit.

I agree completely.
The problem was that they brought him in with the intent to play him on the 2nd pair with Nurse.

2 obvious problems with that...First Emberson isnt even close to being ready to play in the top 4 and second Nurse is absolutely the wrong player to expect to mentor a green dman.
Yet management thought that playing Emberson with Nurse was a good idea.
That concerns me.

 

[McAsuno]

https://x.com/i/web/status/1849278291817247209

Also met Emberson and got his autograph at the autograph session earlier. Really nice guy. Rooting for him here.

 

[NeverForget06]

I agree completely.
The problem was that they brought him in with the intent to play him on the 2nd pair with Nurse.

2 obvious problems with that...First Emberson isnt even close to being ready to play in the top 4 and second Nurse is absolutely the wrong player to expect to mentor a green dman.
Yet management thought that playing Emberson with Nurse was a good idea.
That concerns me.

And then the wisdom is if it doesn't work with Emberson, we bring in a guy who was in the press box to play second pair?
That concerns me!

 

[guymez]

And then the wisdom is if it doesn't work with Emberson, we bring in a guy who was in the press box to play second pair?
That concerns me!

 

[McFlyingV]

Don't really understand why they took him out for Dermott. His first couple games where he had the yips and struggled were bad, but his past 3 games he's looked good in a bottom pairing role.

 

[guymez]

Don't really understand why they took him out for Dermott. His first couple games where he had the yips and struggled were bad, but his past 3 games he's looked good in a bottom pairing role.

I agree.
Emberson was just starting to settle down on the bottom pairing and then he gets taken out.
So much about what they are doing with this defence doesnt make a lot of sense.

 

[McAsuno]

I agree.
Emberson was just starting to settle down on the bottom pairing and then he gets taken out.
So much about what they are doing with this defence doesnt make a lot of sense.

Exactly.
After being on the ice for two goals against at 5v5 in each of his first two games of the season, he then went three straight games without being on the ice for an even-strength goal and his reward was a seat in the press box. Stupid af.

 

[K1984]

Emberson can be a bit of a turnover machine trying to make breakout plays that aren't there. Skating, positioning, everything else is at least ok, he just needs to clean up his puck touches and reads with the puck.

When the alternative is Dermott, who is what he is and sucks, I don't understand why we wouldn't give Emberson some runway to clean up his puck work even if he has some bad looks along the way. If he cleans this up a bit I think there's a player there.

 

[GOilers88]

He's drawing in again tonight on the 3rd pairing next to Kulak. That is where he belongs right now. Putting him (or any inexperienced player) with Nurse is a recipe for disaster right now. I think that he is a very toolsy player that should start gaining traction if his job description is simplified a bit.

I agree. Let him stay there for a good handful of games.

 

[Spawn]

Emberson doesn’t appear to be the diamond in the rough we were hoping could step in for Ceci. But I still think he’s a better option than Dermott right now.

The defense has looked its best with Nurse paired with Stetcher and Kulak with Emberson imo.

I’m ready not to see Dermott play again unless we see some injuries. Let’s allow the bottom two pairings some time to get used to each other.

 

[BarDownBobo]

Emberson doesn’t appear to be the diamond in the rough we were hoping could step in for Ceci. But I still think he’s a better option than Dermott right now.

The defense has looked its best with Nurse paired with Stetcher and Kulak with Emberson imo.

I’m ready not to see Dermott play again unless we see some injuries. Let’s allow the bottom two pairings some time to get used to each other.

I don’t mind them swapping Dermott and Stecher as bit as they feel fit(although Stecher should play 75% of the games imo), but Emberson should be a permanent fixture in the lineup until at least the new year. Give him some runway to see what he can do and learn/bounce back from mistakes. I don’t want to see him playing scared thinking that any single mistake could wind up with him in the press box.