The Kailer Yamamoto appreciation blog
This season’s edition of the Edmonton Oilers is the best and deepest one we’ve seen in quite some time.
The depth on this team is so astounding that Ryan Nugent-Hopkins regularly plays on the third line. He’d be a first line center on most other teams, maybe a second line center at worst.
They had a rough patch earlier in the season, but that is largely cleared up now.
One player who has really broken out this season has been Kailer Yamamoto. He’s been a staple in the top six, usually playing RW on Leon Draisaitl’s line.
Against San Jose last night he recently passed a great milestone – he cracked the 20 goal mark for the first time in his career, and becoming the fifth Oiler to hit that mark. The others are Connor Mcdavid (44), Leon Draisaitl (55), Zack Hyman (27) and Evander Kane (22).
No one else will clinch that mark tonight in the final regular season game against Vancouver – unless you think Jesse Puljujarvi is going to light up the Canucks for six goals tonight. I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.
Notwithstanding whatever Yamamoto gets against the Canucks tonight, his 20-20-40 in 80 games at the time of this writing will stand as a career best for him in goals and points. It will almost double his previous career best in goals which was 11 and best his career points by almost 50% which was 26.
The only damper on his season will be that his +/- went down from +9 last year to -1 this year. Hopefully we can chalk that up to facing tougher competition and he’ll improve on it next year. He’s still only 23, after all, so he’s two seasons away from his prime producing years. He also spends time on both special teams, on the second unit PP and the first unit PK. He’s 10th on the team in PP ice time with 0:49, and 1:10 ice time per game on the PK. That last mark is only 14th on the team.
He’s also an RFA after the season is up. Let’s look closer at what we should do going forward with the player on a new contract.
There’s no question Yamamoto broke out this year, but his results come with some minor asterisks as well.
First of all, his shooting % this year was 17.5%, which is 2.3% above his career average. Now that isn’t a guarantee that he’ll regress next season, but there is a good chance he might. Puck luck has also been on his side this season as, again, notwithstanding the results of one more game, his PDO will finish slightly above the mean at 1.001.
If you think players don’t regress just take a look at ex-Oiler Andreas Athanasiou. He scored 30 goals with Detroit one season and has never gotten close to that mark again since – in fact he hasn’t even cracked 20 goals since. If Detroit had signed him to an eight year contract for $4 million or $5 million per year, they’d have a boat anchor contract on their hands that nobody else would trade for unless they retained half the salary and included a significant sweetener.
Yamamoto may or may not end up on the same trajectory, there’s no telling at this point.
These factors, along with his 10 point slide in +/-, indicate that he’s becoming close to a complete player but he’s not there just yet. There’s no shame in that, as again, time is on his side at the age of 23.
What it does indicate, however, is that we shouldn’t back the Brinks truck up to him just yet.
Not that we shouldn’t re-sign him, just that we shouldn’t pay him big money yet. Let’s see what he’s like as more of a finished product before we do that.
There’s also the fact that the Oilers will be in a bit of cap hell after the season is up. Yes we will get some relief as some deadweight like Kyle Turris will be gone, and the exit of Mikko Koskinen’s bad contract will help as well, but that being said the Oilers still need to find cheap help where they can find it.
As an RFA, the Oilers have more leverage over the player than if he were a UFA, and I have no doubt that Ken Holland will use that leverage to get a team friendly deal.
If I were a betting man I’d say let’s re-sign Yamamoto for $6 million over three seasons. That’s a cap hit of $2 million a season, which is fair at this stage of his career. This buys the Oilers one season of his UFA eligibility as well. At that point the Oilers should have some dead cap space off their books and the cap ceiling will have gone up enough that we can discuss paying him more money then, depending on how he does in the interim.
For the comment trolls who are going to tell me that I’m crazy – what part of one career year says that we should take the huge risk of paying this youngster big money? What if Holland signs him to eight years at $4.5 million a season and he never cracks the 20 goal mark again? Don’t tell me about Oscar Klefbom, that was a different team and a different situation. This edition of the Oilers is a much different one from the one Oscar Klefbom got his deal on – not to mention that one had more free cap space on their books so they could afford to take more risk on a guy like Klefbom. With the Oilers current cap situation, every single penny needs to spent responsibly. That’s a big part of how you can keep your depth players until it’s time to get rid of them.
Next. Myth busting-Goalie Coach Edition. dark