Edmonton Oilers: A Trade For Problem Children Part Two
By Phil Gretzky
Looking at the rest of the scoring
Normally we should be elated by this. However Chiasson has a history of being inconsistent and this season is riding a 35.5 shooting %, which quite frankly is unsustainable for the rest of the season, never mind beyond.
Also worrisome is that he has never cracked the 20 goal mark in his career due to said inconsistency. Ride the wave with him, and when it stops, he goes down to the bottom 6 or waived to Bakersfield.
Ty Rattie has cooled off as the season went on, and Zack Kassian has the same problem as Lucic – he still has a penchant for hitting but has lost his scoring touch.
Anyway, James Neal has been a consistent sniper his entire career – in fact, for 9 of the last ten seasons he has scored 20 goals – and in 1 each of those seasons he cracked the 30 goals and 40 goal mark respectively.
He’s played with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin already in Pittsburgh, which means there’s a good chance he can play with Connor Mcdavid.
In theory, at least this should jumpstart his numbers.
Imagine the 1st line of Nuge-Mcdavid-Neal. That would be a thing of beauty and very dangerous to the opposition.
That would leave Puljujarvi and Yamamoto to battle it out for the other top 6 RW spot, which would only be good for the team.
The Oilers don’t have a consistent scorer they can count on for the long-term right now, and that’s precisely what Neal would bring to the table.
Neal is in the 1st year of a five year free agent contract and is struggling with Calgary – so much so that this would be the 1st year in a long time he doesn’t crack the 20 goal mark and would barely crack the ten goal mark.