Kris Russell
Russell was a Peter Chiarelli signing, that in and of itself puts Russell with a target on his back going into this offseason with a different GM holding the reins. Russell himself is still a pretty solid defender – he’s a stay at home d-man who has been an even or plus player 3 out of 4 years with the Oilers thus far.
He’s also very versatile as he’s the only d-men on the roster that can play both the left and right sides. This season was no exception as he finished even in 55 games – although he did play the entire playoffs on the 3rd pairing and finished -1 with no offence at all. That’s the 1st time in his career he hasn’t put up any points during a playoff series.
The problem comes when you look at the depth chart of the team. With everyone healthy – remember this phrase because it’s key for further down the description – Russell has no place on the roster anymore. That’s not a knock on the player – I still very much like him as a player – but he got pushed down the roster twice this season as prospects gestated ahead of schedule and he was the odd man out.
When Ethan Bear made the Oilers out of training camp last season, that pushed him down to the 3rd pairing, seeing as how you’re not going to demote Nurse, Larsson, or Klefbom. Then, when Russell himself got injured and the Oilers needed to call somebody up, they called up Caleb Jones – and he proceeded to put up the same 9 points Russell did this year except in 12 fewer games. When Russell came back, that created a logjam at the position and he and Jones shared the spot the rest of the season.
Now logically, this would mean Russell would be on his way out in trade for next season, correct? It seemed all but certain until this happened. With Klefbom looking like he is slated to be out for the entire season next year, someone needs to plug his hole on the roster. Although Holland has not said whether he will bring in another player from the outside or simply go with the options already signed on the roster, having Russell signed for 1 more season gives Holland a luxury he wouldn’t otherwise have had: using internal options to plug the hole Klefbom leaves on the roster.
Now I’m not suggesting by any means that Russell alone is good enough to make up for Klefbom’s offence or minutes – far from it. It means Russell could simply take Klefbom’s roster spot, and his offence and minutes would have to be spread around to the 3 puck movers and Russell. In this scenario, Russell would then move back into the top 4 – probably on the left side of the 2nd pairing playing with Larsson, as Nurse-Bear would be elevated to the 1st pairing.
This would then leave Jones playing full time on the 3rd pairing left side. If all goes well, the best-case scenario is Jones might be able to move into Russell’s spot late next season, moving Russell back down into the 3rd pairing. At the end of the season, Russell’s contract is up and we let him walk to save cap space. In the meantime, Klefbom’s $4.167 million cap hit would be on IR for the year, thus negating the effect of Russell’s $4 million cap hit.
It will be a little more difficult to trade Russell if he brings in an outside hire as for some stupid reason Chiarelli gave Russell an NTC with a 10 team trade list, which increases to 15 once next season starts. This might be tough to do, but Russell does have trade value. Besides the aforementioned own zone play, the fact he can play both left and right sides will come in handy, especially for teams looking for guys to play the right side. Those d-men are always in demand on the trade market. The secondary offence he produces is a nice point in his favour, too.
Anyway, back to Russell as a player. You’d never know this about Russell unless you looked him up, but Russell is important to the Oilers PK, as he plays about 2:19 a game on the PK, 3rd most minutes on the team. Unsurprisingly, he’s not much on the PP, only spending about 1 second a game there on average. 16:47 overall. He was also #8 on the team in hits last year with 71, and 4th on the team last year in blocked shots with 101. Fun fact, Russell led the league in blocked shots two seasons in a row in his first two years in an Oilers uniform.
All of that also increases his trade value – and his value to the team, too. His style often results in him being injured, though, as he’s never once played a full NHL season. He came close a couple of times – going 79 games with Calgary once and 78 with Edmonton once, but those two seasons are as close as he’s come.
It’ll be interesting to see whether Holland chooses to retain Russell to help out in the wake of Klefbom’s injury or whether he gets traded prior to next season. Frankly, there are merits to both. Tough call for Holland.
Adam Larsson
There’s a rumour out there that the Oilers are looking at trading Adam Larsson to remake the defence. Lots of Oiler fans in the comments section of different blogs will say we should trade him, however very few can come up with the answer to this obvious question: “Who do you replace him with?”
After all, Larsson is a d-man who’s proven he can play a good 20 minutes a night without being overwhelmed, something not every NHL d-man can do. The Oilers also don’t have an internal option that can step in right away. I saw one ridiculous suggestion from a fan who said we can just move Bear and Benning up a spot and slot Bouchard into the 3rd pairing. This wouldn’t work as from the playoffs we know Bear isn’t ready to take on Larsson’s minutes just yet.
He’s barely finished his rookie season, and we don’t want to overwhelm the poor kid by force-feeding him minutes. Benning is not a top 4 d-man, he’s already proven that in his career. As for Bouchard, we don’t even know if he can play in the NHL yet, much less play with his head above water in a regular spot. What we know about Bouchard now is he needs to work on his play without the puck in Bakersfield, gifting him a spot in the big leagues before he’s ready is not wise.
So, although Larsson may have his flaws, we still need him here for now. I don’t know why, but for some odd reason, TSN has him at #25 on their trade bait board. That doesn’t make sense, as the only way top pairing guys get replaced 9 times out of 10 is internally. Replacing them with an outside hire is very difficult, and will require either a blockbuster signing in free agency or a king’s ransom in trade, and even then very few teams will want to part with their 1st pairing guys because they need them on their current clubs.
The Oilers can’t afford either of those options right now. As much as it pains us, we’ll have to stick with Larsson still, for now, maybe give him a short term contract after this season is up if no other player has moved the needle to the point of taking his minutes from him.
Anyway, back to Larsson as a player. Larsson dealt with injury this year and was only able to play 49 games this past season, in which he put up 1-5-6 and even in those 49 games. That’s way down from the offence he’s put up in past seasons, but on the plus side, he certainly recovered from the awful -28 he put up 2 seasons ago to finish even last season. In the playoffs, he only played 2 games with no offence and a -1 before getting injured again.
He played an average of 19:50 per game this season, which is down from 2 seasons ago due to better depth in the D corps means that the minutes have to be spread out more. Like Russell, he only played about 1 second per game on the PP, but played 1:37 on the PK, good enough for 8th on the team last season. He finished 5th on the team in blocked shots with 82, and also 5th on the team in hits with 112.
There are very few players actually available in trade or free agency who could take Larsson’s minutes without a problem or a high cost to acquire. This means I would bet the farm that Larsson won’t be going anywhere for least 2 more seasons. The Klefbom injury makes this even less so now. After all, could you honestly tell me the Oilers could remake their entire top pairing with outside hires without missing a beat? That’s not a realistic expectation and comes with too much risk for our GM. Larsson stays here and is even re-signed for a short term contract. Count on it.