Edmonton Oilers Rumors: Can the Buffalo Sabres Make A Deal?

What type of players should the Edmonton Oilers target in possible trade deals? Here are a few ideas that might make sense.

Edmonton Oilers: I would like to present to you a trade scenario but I’m not going to use names other than Player A and Player B, and I want you to decide which one you’d choose by looking at their career numbers. I’m sure you’ll be able to guess who the players are but bear with me for this exercise.

Player A – 24 years old – LH Shot – Defenseman – 6’3″ 215lbs

• 5 season in the NHL
• 24 goals, 70 assists, 94 pts, -36
• 4.3 SH%
• Career high pts in a season: 38
• 4 PP goals
• 34 penalty minutes
• AVG TOI: 21:55
• Positive Possession Player: CF% 50.6, FF% 51.4,
• PDO (puck luck): 97.8

This player has endured an injury-ravaged career to date on one of the worst NHL teams in recent history. He’s never scored 40 points in a year and has only played more than 66 games once in his career.

Player B – 23 years old – RH Shot – Defenseman – 6’4″ 218lbs

• Five seasons in the NHL (346 GP)
• 31 goals, 120 assists, 151 pts, -102
• 4.3 SH%
• Career high pts in a season: 45
• 10 PP goals
• 171 penalty minutes
• AVG TOI: 24:09
• Negative Possession Player: CF% 43.8, FF% 44
• PDO (puck luck): 98.8

This player has scored 40 pts in three out of his five NHL seasons despite playing on one of the worst teams in the NHL. So, who are players A and B you ask?

So who does Player A and B compare to?

Hockey-reference.com has this thing called “similarity scores” and what it does is it uses statistics to find a comparable to the player you’re looking at. Here are some of those comps to the players above:

Player A: Anton Babchuk, Niclas Havelid, Patrick Wiercioch

Player B: Rob Blake, Mike O’Connell, Jordan Leopold

Yikes for Player A…

The Edmonton Oilers are looking for a right-handed defenseman and the rumors of Rasmus Ristolainen being available won’t stop. It also doesn’t help with a member of the media who covers the Edmonton Oilers for a living says this,

“With the draft the Buffalo Sabres are about to have is Rasmus Ristolainen all of a sudden potentially up for grabs? Do you see the Buffalo Sabres saying, ‘OK, well, considering the pick they’re going to make with No. 1, can they maybe move Ristolainen out? And do they maybe look to bring a veteran Swede in to help work the blueline with their new young Swede? Is their potential for a Klefbom swap out to Buffalo, maybe along with that pick?” “I’m spitballing a lot of stuff here, but my over-riding sentiment is I believe the Oilers will be aggressive in hunting some of the big game to see if they can fill that need on the back-end.” (link)

Does this type of trade make sense?

Why I Like The Idea

I’m not convinced that will be any more than what we’ve seen. He’s a player that is injury prone to date and hasn’t put the necessary offense up apart from one season where the entire team was on a heater. And should we be happy when we hear a defender’s name being brought up in the Lady Byng conversation? I like players who play clean, but that also tells me that the player might not be going all out on the ice to stop the opposition too.

I’m also a fan of the way that Rasmus Ristolainen plays the game of hockey. He’s tough and doesn’t take any guff from forwards like Nazim Kadri for example. He can shoot the pill and simply put, he produces.

A lot of Oilers fans have an emotional attachment to Oscar Klefbom, and that’s where a lot of pushback on this deal would like within the fanbase.

I think it’s unfair to Ristolainen to criticize him with regards to how his point totals were accumulated. It’s not his fault that his GM couldn’t find his team the necessary playing personnel so that he wouldn’t have to play 26 minutes a night.

That wouldn’t be a problem in Edmonton with Adam Larsson on the club as well. And the fact that he puts up points on with the man advantage, that’s a good thing, no? I mean if you disagree there, I urge you to go back and watch the Oilers powerplay last season. An area where players who can put up points are required.

Potential Roadblocks

Another common complaint is that Ristolainen is a mediocre skater and can’t move the puck hence his terrible giveaway/takeaway ratio but I’d beg to differ. Playing on the Buffalo Sabres and not having the best linemates or team for that matter probably didn’t help.

Now if his puck management is a real concern, on the Oilers, he could be paired with Andrej Sekera who is an astute puck mover. Darnell Nurse can also move the puck.

But let’s not pretend his skating is a problem. He’s not Bobby Orr, but he’s also not Mark Fayne. Skating isn’t the issue.

That being said, Jack Eichel‘s CF% with Ristolainen was 63.35 and 49.13 without him in 630 minutes TOI. That’s just one example of his impact on high-end hockey players. Ryan O’Reilly and Sam Reinhart experienced similar results last season.

Oscar Klefbom’s 5×5 GF% last year was 43.56, and Ristolainen’s was 42.0. I want to argue that that has more to do with Buffalo, but when I look back, Ristolainen puts up similar numbers in the past. His career high was 45% two seasons ago. Whereas Klefbom’s career high was 52.85 the year the Oilers made the playoffs but that year Adam Larsson’s was 56.35, and Kris Russell’s 5×5 GF% was 54.67… (link)

We can use all sorts of numbers and statistics to dress things up to our liking but when it all comes down to it, Rasmus Ristolainen has put the points on the board, and Oscar Klefbom hasn’t.