Should the Oilers sign Thomas Milic as a free agent?

HALIFAX, CANADA - DECEMBER 31: Goaltender Thomas Milic #1 of Team Canada skates off after celebrating a victory against Team Sweden in the 2023 IIHF World Junior Championship at Scotiabank Centre on December 31, 2022 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Team Canada defeated Team Sweden 5-1. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)
HALIFAX, CANADA - DECEMBER 31: Goaltender Thomas Milic #1 of Team Canada skates off after celebrating a victory against Team Sweden in the 2023 IIHF World Junior Championship at Scotiabank Centre on December 31, 2022 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Team Canada defeated Team Sweden 5-1. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)
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For Oilers fans who don’t know who Thomas Milic is, now you’ll know after reading this.

Yup, for the record he’s the only undrafted player on Canada’s world junior team from this past December.

He started out as the backup goalie for the team, but once the starter faltered in went Milic and he never let up from there, finishing on the gold medal-winning team with a .932 sv% and a stingy 1.76 GAA. He also played in previous tournaments for Team Canada where he had a .975 sv% and 0.50 GAA in two games for the under-18 team and a .925 sv% and a 2.54 GAA for the under-17 team.

His junior career has been on a broadly upward trajectory as well, see for yourself.

And yet Milic has gone undrafted in the two NHL entry drafts he’s been eligible for, and he won’t be eligible for this year’s draft either as he’ll be 20 by then and thus past the age limit for being drafted by an NHL team.

Why this is I don’t know, but then again I’m not an NHL scout either.

Of course, this means that having played four seasons of junior hockey by now and reaching the age limit for the WHL, he can’t go back to junior either.

Now of course this doesn’t mean his NHL dream is dead, not by any means. He can still sign as a free agent with an NHL team, even on an AHL-only pact. So while it’s the more unorthodox route to go, Milic could still make an NHL system yet.

If all else fails he can always play college hockey in the NCAA or the CIAU (Canadian university-level league).

He’s bound to have attracted more attention from his performance at the world junior tournament, though.

In fact, it’s safe to say that he’s already cashing in on that performance considering that the Seattle Kraken has seen him play in junior for their counterpart in the Seattle Thunderbirds, and have invited him to an amateur tryout.

What does his scouting report say? 

He doesn’t come out to aggressively challenge in order to take away space, but rather uses his speed and impressive footwork control to constantly keep up with where the play seems to be headed; he doesn’t necessarily make the flashiest saves, but he also prevents himself from needing to recover by staying on the more conservative side with his depth overall.

From this, it would seem that perhaps because he doesn’t have the typical goalie size or a typical goalie style that may be why NHL teams have stayed away from him.

Mandatory Credit: Steven Bisig-USA TODAY Sports
Mandatory Credit: Steven Bisig-USA TODAY Sports /

Considering the Oiler’s poor track record at drafting goalies – they’ve only successfully drafted four in their entire NHL existence (Andy Moog, Grant Fuhr, Devan Dubnyk, Stuart Skinner) – that they’d jump at the chance to sign Milic who should be an upgrade on at least one of our goaltenders down in the minors. But, it’s not quite that simple.

As you can see courtesy of CapFriendly, the Oilers currently have two undisputed options up at the top in Soup and Stew.

Below them is the #3 guy in Calvin Pickard, however, Pickard was faltering to start the season in Bakersfield as in his first six starts or so he had a GAA over 3.00 and a sv% below .900, but that being said it looks like he’s picked up his game in the interim. 2018 second-round pick Olivier Rodrigue had taken Pickard’s starter spot in the meantime, showing that he was taking a step forward with a sv% approaching .920 however that has since gone down to .909 – worth noting that it is still a career-best for Rodrigue’s pro career thus far.

So this leaves Condor’s head coach Colin Chaulk with the same dilemma as the Oilers have – with two capable goaltenders which one do you start from game to game? From a fan’s perspective, you could just flip a coin, although it would make sense to give Rodrigue more starts as he’s the guy the team is actually developing while Pickard is just insurance in case of injury.

With the Condors already with two capable goalies that only leaves the other goalie to get starts for ECHL Fort Wayne – Ryan Fanti, the man whose picture appears above.

Fanti was signed last March by the Oilers out of the US College system. He has so far had a rather dubious start to his pro career, as you can see by his stats. However, it’s worth noting that the sample size is very small – although Fanti has not gotten off to a great start in either the AHL or the ECHL, he’s only played a mere 16 games of pro hockey, hardly enough to condemn a man to the dust bin of history.

Edmonton Oilers (Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
Edmonton Oilers (Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images) /

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.

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