The Oilers extended Mike Smith a week before Grubauer (July 21) signed in Seattle (July 28) last season. That was kinda idiotic too. Basically nearly no one bid on a pretty good goaltender that the Oilers desperately needed. The German connection between Grubauer and Draisaitl might have helped the Oilers too... but now that I think about it, is this around the same time he went on that screwy LTIR/salary cap math mumbling interview going back and forth with Klefbom's cap hit that everyone was laughing about? Dude was wonky that summer.
If I were an Oiler fan, I would be livid looking at these main sequences:
- Loses AA to FA after paying a premium for him.
- Extends RNH 5.125 AAV x 8 (fair move)
- Salary considered a premium league wide, Oilers need it for a few moves but should have enough.
- July 12 adds cap by adding Keith (considered an overpay by many); left with around 10 mil cap space with 10 forwards and 7 dmen
- July 21 extends Smith 2.2 AAV 2 years
- August 6, extends Nurse 9.25 AAV x 8
- Grubauer signs in Seattle July 28
The answer was fricken right there with zero acquisition cost! And don't tell he couldn't get the cap to work. There's no way he couldn't have sent a 2nd with the 3.7 AAV ish cap (difference between his and Smith's contract) to Seattle to fit Grubauer.
But honestly speaking, I seem to recall that when Holland was in Detroit, there was always this tire kicking meme of him going around prior to TDL and then variations of him sitting on his hands post TDL. The MO seems to be unchanged even in Edmonton. I don't think the tire kicking is as much of an indication of anything. Acquisition wise, Holland hasn't seemed to commit to any form of a big deal in the last decade. AA might be the closest. He's certainly sold a few players in the last decade for a haul though (so at least that's kinda hopeful for you guys if things get truly that bad).
Yeah, Smith felt like a panic move from the get-go. He then kept blaming having Koskinen under contract as a reason he couldn't upgrade.
Trust me, I'm livid about a few other things as well.
1) Not claiming Nedjelkovic on waivers
2) Not being able to make a trade for Nedjelkovic when we needed a goalie desperately.
3) Not going for Grubauer
As per your list above:
I don't mind the AA deal. I defended the trade for him at the time, and I wish we had more time to see if he could fit, but I also recognize that he was overpaid at the time so we shouldn't have traded 2nd rounders for him. Losing him to FA was probably better than re-signing him for a raise.
The RNH extension is fine.
The Keith trade would have been excellent with some retention on the deal. I still think he made the team better by upgrading from Caleb Jones to Keith, but he murdered too much cap space while doing it. The real issue with this trade was that they gave Chicago the cap space to overpay Seth Jones, which led to the #1 defenseman market being obliterated last year, precisely when we needed to extend Nurse.
Signing Smith would have been fine. Signing him for 2 years was awful.
Signing Nurse had to happen. He's evolved into a #1 defenseman. The first we've really had since Pronger left 15 years ago. As I mentioned above, it kills me that they contributed to the Jones deal, which led to Nurse's price skyrocketing. Switch up the order of events. Sign Nurse earlier, and I wonder if they could have saved 1.5 M on his deal. If he didn't have Jones and Werenski to use as comparables, there's no way he's getting his huge raise. And for the record, if he plays like he did last year, I have no issue with that salary. It makes things tight, but based on last year, he was worth that contract.
Signing Nurse was great. Not signing him long term earlier was the mistake.
