Oilers: Highlighting some key pieces of news from the past week
By Phil Gretzky
Mike Smith re-ups
This is not worth devoting an entire blog to because we all knew it would happen. It’s a two-year contract worth $4.4 million in total, $2.2 million per season.
The two year contract was apparently something Smith insisted upon as he spent the entire season last year away from his family and didn’t want to do that again. So, here we are.
He gets a slight raise on last year’s $1.5 million with $500K in bonuses, after a season in which he actually garnered some Vezina votes. Very much unexpected by most, considering his age. However, Smith is a fitness freak, a great leader in the locker room, and is driven to backstop the Oilers to a Stanley Cup.
It remains to be seen who his tandem partner is as a lot of heat is on Koskinen right now.
Rumour has it this will be his retirement contract, he’ll be 41 by the time it ends and the Oilers will probably have at least one younger option at that point. On the other hand, if he’s a fitness freak like Chris Chelios before him, maybe he defies the odds of age and plays until he’s 45, maybe backing up a guy like Andrei Vasilevsky or Connor Hellebuyck.
Regardless, there is risk with this contract but it’s still pretty reasonable and allows Holland to check yet another box from his offseason list. Great job, Kenny H.
Is Mikko Koskinen being replaced?
Rumors persist that Koskinen will not be back with the Oilers next season. There are potential trading partners for him – they’ve been linked to Darcy Kuemper in Arizona in trade, and I could see Koskinen plus a high draft pick going the other way.
Although they’re bound to get Samsanov signed, Washington has only one goalie in the fold at the time of this writing. Could they be interested? Perhaps. I’d be willing to retain at least $1 million of Koski’s cap hit to make a trade happen, would you? Not sure what the return would be from Washington, but the Oilers are running out of trading partners between the pipes fast, so they’ll have to act quickly on a Koski trade.
We’re also hearing the Oilers might actually buy him out, as well. We’ll see what happens on this front too. If they can complete a Zack Kassian trade, maybe they use whatever they get back to flip Koski out.