Colton Parayko to the Oilers?

Rumours persist that perhaps the Oilers might be trading for RD Colton Parayko. As I’m sure we’re all aware by now, the Blues had a terrible season last year, finishing 23rd in the league and sixth in the Central division – only Arizona and Chicago, two prominent lottery teams – finished worse in the division than St. Louis.

Trading Vladimir Tarasenko to the Rangers and Ryan O’Reilly to the Leafs around the deadline shows an obvious wish to rebuild the team.

The Oilers haven’t poached anyone significant from the Blues yet – unless you count Klim Kostin as significant which I don’t.

Parayko could be the first guy. He put up 4-23-27 in 79 games last year on that lousy St. Louis team, the 27 points being the second-worst mark of his career. Most of all, he finished with a career-low -19 last season – again, on a lousy St. Louis team.

So why would the Oilers think about obtaining him?  

Because the GM’s main job is to make the team better, and if Parayko will make your team better and you can pull off a reasonable trade, then it’s Ken Holland’s job to at least think about pulling the trigger on the trade. Not to mention that if the Oilers are indeed still interested in Erik Karlsson, it’s worth noting that Parayko is still less of a risk defensively than Karlsson, who finished -26 on a lousy San Jose team – and yeah he had 101 points last year which is phenomenal for a defenceman, but he’s well known as an extremist puck mover who is terrible in his own end but is one of the few players who might be able to outscore his mistakes.

Is that better?  I’m not convinced of that, especially considering all the crazy wheeling and dealing you’d have to do to fit his $11.5 million contract into our cap.

Anyway, getting out of the hypothetical and back to the real, the million-dollar question is would Parayko be better than the incumbent in the roster spot, Cody Ceci? That’s a question that I can’t answer but will attempt to lay out the facts.

What would the trade look like? 

Analysis

The Oilers don’t have the cap space to trade for Parayko without sending enough warm bodies out the door and Ceci and Kulak are really the only two guys you can send out as they’re the most expendable guys on the roster and those two players combined would equal $6,000,000 in cap space. That should get the Oilers up to a point where they can ask St. Louis to keep a minimal amount of cap space for the rest of the contract (which for the record is even less than the NHL minimum salary).

Since Parayko struggled last season the conditional second-round pick is an acknowledgement of that but if Parayko succeeds here as expected then that’s when St. Louis gets the first-round pick they’d likely want. If Parayko’s previous season proves to be his new normal then a second-round pick is fairer compensation.

St. Louis’s sixth-round pick is simply a sweetener and copies what Holland pulled off in the Ekholm trade with Nashville. The Oilers third rounder goes to St. Louis as compensation for the retained salary.

Let’s look closer at this trade now.

There are a lot of good reasons to make this trade.

Parayko is a local boy (well, local enough, St. Albert) so he’d probably be overjoyed to come home and play for a Stanley Cup contender with his hometown team – just like Mark Messier did years ago in the 80s. For the record, Parayko does have a NTC in his contract but it doesn’t kick in until 2028.

On paper at least Parayko is a slam dunk upgrade on Cody Ceci despite his bad +/- last season which we can probably chalk up to playing on a bad team as he was one of 10 players who finished on the wrong side of the ledger.

It’s worth noting that just two seasons ago when St. Louis was a better team that Parayko finished with a +16, the third-best mark of his career. The Blues also made the playoffs that year and he finished 2-3-5 in 12 playoff games for St. Louis – pretty good and certainly beats Ceci’s mark from this season of 0-1-1 in 12 games – yes I know they’re different player types so don’t bother pointing that out.

Ceci finished at +11 this year, so not only is Parayko a comparable defender when he’s on his game, but his offensive ceiling is higher too – Parayko’s ceiling as a puck-moving defender is 35 points, which for the record he tied just two seasons ago.

Ceci is a bit different as he’s evolved into a stay-at-home guy who can produce secondary offence. Ceci produced a comparable amount of offence as he produced 28 points just two seasons ago, which he did in an Oilers uniform and that was a new career high for him – but considering his point totals have fallen to 15 points this season – almost in half from the season before, even for a stay at home guy that’s a tough pill to swallow.

The other warm body deserves some mention as well. I have no objection to Brett Kulak as a player, but let’s face it, at $2.75 million he’s overpaid to play in the bottom pairing. Yes, he lost his spot when the Oilers traded for Mattias Ekholm and rightly so – you don’t trade for a player of that calibre and then play him on the bottom pairing, that’s a waste of $6 million in cap space.

The Oilers should be able to easily replace Kulak with a cheaper option as an outside hire in free agency or simply give Philip Broberg more of a regular spot (whether that’s wise or not is up for debate at this point in time). It’s worth noting that Kulak is unlikely to dislodge Ekholm from his roster spot anytime soon so it might be better to trade him to a team with depth that isn’t as good…..like St. Louis.

Parayko is also bigger than Ceci – 6’6″ and 228 lbs vs. 6’2″ and 210 lbs so this trade would inject more size into the lineup, not a bad thing especially come playoff time.

Although Parayko doesn’t play on St. Louis’s PP, he does play on the first PK unit as does Ceci so the replacement on special teams is ready-made. But, he should at least be an option for the second unit PP here in Edmonton as it would be hard to ignore the firepower of a guy who can put up 35 points a season at mostly evens. For the record Parayko played 1:55 per game on the PK, good for second on the Blues last year. Even though he’s not a regular on the Blues PP, he did spend 37 seconds a game there on average last season.

There’s also the appeal of giving Connor Mcdavid and Leon Draisaitl another weapon on the back end. A first pairing of Nurse-Parayko would be a very good one from a puck-moving perspective and on paper at least would be a difficult one to stop. Put them on the ice with Mcdavid and/or Draisaitl and the top end of the roster becomes that much harder on the opposition.

He can also eat minutes at a similar rate to Ceci as he finished second on the Blues in average TOI with 23 minutes a game even, compared to Ceci’s 20:08. Plunking a guy like Parayko at the top of the roster who’s used to munching minutes against tough competition with huge potential to produce more offence than Ceci has great appeal.

Parayko knows how to use his size too, as he finished sixth on the Blues last season in hits with 115 and led the team in blocked shots with 144.

How many of you think this team could always use another fantastic shot blocker? I certainly do.

More evidence showcasing his defensive prowess? Parayko had 49 giveaways last year for St. Louis, good enough for third on the team (bummer) but it’s worth mentioning he had 59 takeaways, good enough for second on the team in that category.

I’m willing to bet with a better roster around him the giveaway number goes down.

Then there’s also the fact that Parayko is a Stanley Cup winner so he knows what it takes to win – and he put up 12 points in the 26 playoff games the Blues played that year.

There’s no question that Parayko is a great player but he comes with risk.

First of all, his -19 last season it’s worth asking whether that is a new normal or an aberration. Putting conditions on the main draft pick that goes to the Blues helps to mitigate that risk, but it’s a risk nonetheless.

Probably the biggest reason to give this trade pause though is due to the length of his contract. Parayko just turned 30 a couple of weeks ago and he has been a top-pairing blueliner for the Blues for some time. It’s worth wondering how many hard miles he has on his body and whether his contract will age well in the coming years. He’s also signed for the next seven seasons at his current rate of $6.5 million a season ($6 million if St. Louis agrees to retain that 500K of salary).

That means he’ll be 37 by the time the contract ends, and considering how many years he’s been playing as a top pairing guy it’s worth being a little nervous about taking on that contract.

And there’s thinking about the guys you’re giving up. Ceci might not be the same puck mover but he has proven that with this roster playing at its best, he can put up at least a comparable amount of points to Parayko – and he does it at half the cap hit. That’s not nothing.

There’s also the question of chemistry and jumping into the unknown. We know Ceci can play with Nurse. We know he can handle the minutes asked of him. We don’t know if Parayko can genuinely play with Nurse – and major roster moves don’t always work out. If it doesn’t work out, you’ve given up a known commodity plus a solid depth d-man in exchange for an underachieving player with a much larger cap hit whose contract then becomes a boat anchor on the roster – almost as much as Oliver Ekman-Larsson is to Vancouver.

That’s a lot of risk.

It’s also worth noting that Ceci is only signed for another two seasons after this one, so not only does he have a much lower cap hit but his contract is up a lot sooner.

Then there’s also the state of the franchise in general. This is a team that’s widely acknowledged as a Stanley Cup contender, which means the top of the roster is one that at best we know works and at least is competitive.

Is it worth it to make this big a move to a roster that might not actually need it? I don’t know the answer to that, but it’s certainly something to think about. If we were the Ottawa Senators prior to the trade deadline and Parayko would help us get to the playoffs and we had the cap space to take him on, that’s one thing, but when you’re the Oilers who have the two best players in the world taking up 25% of your cap, you have to watch every penny of cap space you spend.

Not to mention Parayko would impede the process of young prospect dmen being able to make the roster.

Should Ken Holland do it?  

I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. Parayko brings a lot of good things to the table but I don’t know if he’s worth the risk. On the other hand, the Oilers are in win-now mode and so right now the future is secondary to the present.

I’m going to say maybe Ken Holland should do this. St. Louis is certainly not shy about sending out their veterans and I have to think that veterans from their bygone era like Parayko might be getting a little antsy to play on a winner – not to mention Parayko is bound to be excited going to his hometown team.

I’d say Holland should do his usual due diligence on the player, talk to his people, and see what they say, and if everything checks out this might be the last piece of the puzzle we need on D.