Roster Moves: Oilers claim Alex Stalock off waivers

As per The Edmonton Journal, the Oilers have claimed goaltender Alex Stalock on waivers from Minnesota.

With an emerging young goalie named Kaapo Kahkonen on the roster – and already having Cam Talbot entrenched on the roster as well as wanting to avoid a three-headed goaltending monster, the Wild put Stalock on waivers with the purpose of putting him on their taxi squad for goalie depth.

But, as the Hurricanes did to the Oilers earlier in the season with Anton Forsberg, the Oilers flipped the script and snaked Stalock from Minnesota for the same purpose – to be a third-string goaltender.  Oh the cruel mistress of waivers to go down to the taxi squad.

Not that the barometer was set very high, but Stalock will be a huge upgrade on minor league failure Dylan Wells, who currently occupies the spot by default.  Once Stalock goes through his mandatory 14 day covid quarantine, Wells will be cast aside and banished to ECHL Wichita which is where he truly belongs.  His contract is up after this season, so he’ll be going away forever after that.

Stalock will be a solid acquisition for both now and the future – I’ll expand more on that later in the blog.

Who is Alex Stalock? 

Stalock is best described as a career NHL backup goaltender.  The 33 year old has never played more than 38 games in a season – a mark he reached last season filling in for the injured Devan Dubnyk.  He only has 151 games on his resume.  During his career in terms of sv% he’s put up 2 elite years of .944 and .932, 3 average years of .910 * 2 and .902, and 3 mediocre years of .846, .884, and .899.  I’m not counting the one game he played in his rookie season where he had a 1.000 sv% because it was only on 9 shots in that game.  Most NHL level goaltenders can stop nine shots in a game, that is simply not enough of a sample size to count.  His GAA follows the same pattern in the exact same seasons.  As the actual numbers are not unexpected in any way I won’t bore you by posting them.

So, it’s obvious he suffers from inconsistency.  That’s OK considering the minor role he’s going to play with the Oilers.  Also, considering the firepower the D has been exhibiting as of late (TO series notwithstanding) it’s reasonable to assume that Minnesota’s D is inferior to ours.  This will help mitigate his inconsistency.

Certainly he’ll be a better option at the position than Wells would be, even better than Skinner was.  He may be only 33, but with only 151 games on his resume, he may have enough gas left in the tank that he could play well past the age of 35, albeit in a minor role.

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One of the best things about this transaction is that Stalock only makes $785K for the next two seasons, so he won’t take up a lot of cap space.  Of course, for this season that total will be prorated which helps even more.

Even better is that it sets up the Oilers very well for the Seattle expansion draft which is to take place after this season.

Expansion draft

For you see, the rules for the expansion draft stipulate that every NHL team must expose one goaltender who’s under contract for next season as well or be an RFA that has received a QO.  Now since Mikko Koskinen has a M-NTC, unless he waives it (good luck with that), he must be protected.  This is not a choice, it’s mandatory.

This means we already know the one goalie the Oilers will protect in the expansion draft.  Up until the claim of Stalock, what was a lot less certain was how the Oilers would meet the requirement of exposing a goaltender.

After all, Mike Smith is a UFA after this season.  Don’t be fooled by his recent performance, no goaltender sets a new career high in sv% at the age of 38 – this is simply unsustainable.

This would leave the Oilers with a huge dilemma.  If they re-sign Smith again, you run the very high risk that the by then 39 year old goalie with a lot of NHL mileage on his body breaks down, not an ideal situation when you know his platoon partner is not capable of carrying the team with a starter’s workload.  This is of course assuming he doesn’t get picked in the expansion draft – and why would he when he’s geriatric by NHL standards?

If you bring in somebody from the outside prior to the expansion draft, you run the risk of the newcomer being claimed, since you know he can’t be protected.  I suppose you’ve got the option of sending a draft pick or warm body to the Kraken not to take him, but that would take assets and result in the unpleasantness of two transactions to make one trade/signing.  It would certainly make Holland look foolish for him to land a big fish goaltender in trade or free agency only to have him snatched away for free by Seattle.  As an aside, there’s one big name the Oilers should go after once the dust settles on the expansion draft – I’ll do that reveal closer to the end of the season.

But, by claiming Stalock, now the Oilers can avoid all of that.  They can let Mike Smith walk with no consequences and considering all the cap space they’ll have to work with after this season – again that’s coming up in a blog down the road – can at long last find an upgrade at the position while also using Stalock to satisfy the league requirement to leave one goaltender exposed.

If Stalock ends up getting picked in the expansion draft, then it’s no big deal because in the grand scheme of things he won’t be hard to replace.

I was going to devote an entire blog to this very topic, but now that the real world has found a solution that won’t be necessary.

Meanwhile, the Oilers should be able to upgrade on Mike Smith at the goaltending position once the dust has settled on the Seattle expansion draft.

Now in case of injury to one of their goalies – again – the Oilers have a stable veteran to take over, something they didn’t have at the beginning of the season when Smith got injured in his first practice.

Once again Ken Holland has done a great job at pulling a rabbit out of his hat to solve a roster problem.  In Ken we trust.