Should the Oilers sign Thomas Milic as a free agent?

If GM Ken Holland wants to sign Milic – and he should at least consider it at this point – and put him in the Oilers system there are two inalienable truths – 1) He must do it as quickly as possible before another NHL team snaps him up – as mentioned Seattle has already invited him to their next training camp and Minny has been sniffing around him already. He’s only bound to attract more suitors after his world juniors performance. The other truth?  2) He will more than likely need to move at least one goalie out of the system.

Let’s rule out Rodrigue – his career is starting to show signs of life and the Oilers invested a second-round pick in him, so he’s not going anywhere.

Rodrigue’s contract is up after this season but I have to believe he’s coming back unless he completely implodes between now and the end of the AHL season.

Pickard and Fanti are both signed for next season as well. This makes moving either of them more difficult. Not impossible, just more difficult.

If the Oilers get rid of Pickard, that means that they won’t have a goalie with NHL experience at the ready in case Skinner or Campbell go down with an injury, which means you’d be throwing a prospect into the deep end. That usually doesn’t end well – and will likely torpedo the Oiler’s season if it happens for an extended period of time.

If the Oilers get rid of Fanti, then they’ll run the risk of giving up on a good goalie too early and end up waiving him for free or shipping him off somewhere else in a bad trade.

What about the other option?  

I think you know what I’m talking about. If you looked at that CapFriendly site, you’ll see the Oilers only have three goalies signed for their minor league system. Couldn’t they just sign Milic and stash him in Fort Wayne for now, bringing him up to the AHL and NHL as merit allows?

That’s definitely an option. Before Skinner came along and the Oilers drafting was so terrible that they had no reasonable starter in the AHL or ECHL, they did for a time run with four goalies in the system, two with the Condors and two with the Wichita Thunder, as their ECHL affiliate at the time was.

That didn’t work out so well then, but maybe it’ll be different now with better drafts and free-agent signings.

You could probably pull it off but if you look at Fort Wayne’s current goalie stats, you’ll see that they are currently rotating four goalies there already, including Fanti.

As I can’t find any information on how the ECHL contracts work or how the affiliation agreements work, I don’t know if the Oilers can simply dictate to Fort Wayne to give Milic a few starts and see how he does, or if they can simply discard goalies currently playing for them.

Ken Holland probably knows more about this than I do, so he’d know if it was a reasonable option or not.

So that’s the million-dollar question for Oilers GM Ken Holland

Does he sign Thomas Milic and if he does how does he shuffle the deck in the minor leagues, if at all?

I don’t know what the answer is to that question, only that Milic at this point looks like a solid prospect and it would be great if he got his big-league chance with the Oilers.

We’ll see if Ken Holland makes a move in this regard.