GM Peter Chiarelli says Oilers have to move a player but not for one year

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GM Peter Chiarelli says Oilers have to move a player but not for one year Back to video

Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli has a number of options this summer, but it all comes to a head around two controversial players in Jordan Eberle and Kris Russell. David Staples and Bruce McCurdy of the Cult of Hockey dig into the performance and rumours around these Oilers players and others.

Cap will force a trade but Chia says he “has one year to play with”

This just in from Edmonton Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli, an excellent interview with TSN’s Pierre LeBrun where Chiarelli openly discusses the need to move a player for salary cap reasons sometime in the future: “The way we are going to have to spend our money in the future will probably mean us moving a player. When that future is, I don’t know. You know, basically, we’ve got a year to play with, in my mind.”

My take

1. It’s a short but excellent interview between the veteran LeBrun and Chiarelli, so you’ll want to listen to the entire thing here, as Chiarelli talks about the Hall-Larsson trade being a “fair trade,” again goes over how he’d like to sign Kris Russell but first intends to sign Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, says he expects to lose a player to Vegas and doesn’t expect to make a deal with them in that regard, and defends Jordan Eberle, saying outside of two players (McDavid and Draisaitl) that Eberle had the most positive touches of the puck on the team. 
2. What is new in the interview is Chiarelli openly talking about what is patently obvious, that because of salary cap issues in the summer of 2018, the Oilers won’t be able to keep together the current roster and will have to move a player or two. Not only does McDavid’s contract kicked in for 2018-19, but that same summer Chiarelli must sign Patrick Maroon, Tyler Pitlick, Anton Slepyshev, Drake Caggiula, Matt Benning, Darnell Nurse and Laurent Brossoit. This is more of the same honesty from Chiarelli, in him not saying specifically who he is going to move (though this comment did come up in the context of a question about Eberle’s future and the team’s next big trade), but him saying he’s going to have to move someone.
3. If you doubt that Chiarelli spells out exactly what he’s going to do, well, he’s done it repeatedly in Edmonton, as I detailed in this post. In his first year, Chiarelli said he needed a heavier team, needed to improve the goaltending and improve his defence. At the end of that same year, he said he’d likely move a forward to get a defenceman. He did all those things. He said he would not make a major trade at the 2017 deadline and he did not make one. He has already said spelled out his major priorities for the summer in signing McDavid and Draisaitl and has otherwise indicated he may well stand pat, though that will change obviously if he can’t sign Russell on defence. Perhaps the need for a top defenceman would trigger the move of a well-paid player like Eberle.
4. The Oilers are one of the top contenders for the Stanley Cup next year, so getting rid of Eberle right now — unless Chiarelli is sure that the player is a liability and that his scoring can be replaced — makes little sense. I don’t track positive touches of the puck (no doubt other analytics companies do excellent tracking work like that), but I do count up who contributes to the most scoring chances on the team. Eberle had the third highest rate of major contributions to Grade A scoring chances per game on the Oilers, after only Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. This syncs with what Chiarelli just said.
5. Obviously the full weight of the awfulness of the Benoit Pouliot contract will be felt not this year, but next summer. Pouliot will have a final year left on his $4 million per deal, which will be a hefty amount to buy out. It would be far better to move Pouliot than Eberle, of course, but if there’s no market for Pouliot, it may cost the team Eberle. Of all the bad trades and transactions made during the Tambellini-MacTavish era, the Pouliot one may turn out to be the most consequential because of the deal’s team and timing. 

Staples on the city

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At the Cult of Hockey

McCURDY: Which player is Vegas bound?

Staples: Ten great coaching moves by Todd McLellan

Staples: Chiarelli’s boldest move this summer? It could be holding on to Eberle