Offseason questions for Ken Holland

To be honest I’m not sure the Oilers could have a better hand on the wheel right about now. The Oilers are in a good place – they have a solid core that are locked up for many years. Holland completed one huge trade with the acquisition of Mattias Ekholm and he may do at least one more before next season arrives depending on whether he can make the cap space work or not (more on that later).

He built a team that was a Stanley Cup contender for years in Detroit, both before and after the salary cap was implemented in 2005, so as far as what the Oilers are going through now Holland has been there, done that. Publicly he says he won’t make a lot of major changes to the team, but we all know that things can change quickly for NHL teams, especially in the offseason.

After all, the Oilers are in win-now mode, and that’s a time to make blockbuster changes to the roster if it is proven to make the team better. I was skeptical of trading Barrie for Ekholm a little at first, but once I saw the effect Ekholm had on the rest of the roster – Evan Bouchard, especially – I was on board. No longer is Peter Chiarelli our GM, the guy who thinks it’s a good idea to panic and downgrade the talent level of the roster or trade two second-round picks for a guy who was barely an AHL bubble player at the time.

There’s going to be a lot of NHL teams who are starting rebuilds that we might be able to pull a guy or two out of, or at least consider it – St. Louis., Nashville (again, if possible), San Jose (maybe won’t deal with a division rival, but stranger things have happened) or Philadelphia as the latest example. You could throw Vancouver in there too, but again there’s the division rival thing.

Every NHL player would seize the opportunity to play with Connor Mcdavid and Leon Draisaitl if they had the chance but like all the contenders the Oilers are hurting for cap space right now.  Which leads me to my first question…..

Our source for all things NHL salary cap is CapFriendly, so let’s take a look at what the cap situation is at this point in time.

Gary Bettman has been asked about the cap for the next couple of seasons and he has publicly said that the cap could go up by as much as $4,000,000 next season.

You see this all goes back to the pandemic when the NHL was forced to shut down operations midseason in one case and then start much later on in the calendar year the next – and even then there were no fans in the building and all the playoffs were played in a bubble in either Edmonton or Toronto, with Tampa Bay winning their second Stanley in 2021 here in Edmonton. As restrictions were eased by health authorities and vaccination numbers increased (the pandemic was declared over three weeks ago in case you missed it) some fans were allowed in the building and then all seats were opened.

So you may ask what happened to players’ salaries during this time that the NHL was shut down? Well, the owners secured bridge financing to pay player salaries while the season wasn’t being played. In return, the NHLPA used all of their escrow money (~ 20% of a player’s gross income that gets paid back at the end of the season if the owners are not suffering financially) to pay back the owners the salaries they were paid while they weren’t playing, and the cap only went up by $1,000,000 a year since the NHL re-opened for business.

Well, ever since then according to Gary Bettman the NHL has recovered its pandemic costs at a faster rate than anticipated, and while it was originally projected to take at least one more season for the players to pay back the owners for the salaries they collected while two seasons ended prematurely and started late, depending upon playoff revenues those costs might be recovered by the end of the playoffs this season, which means the cap will now go back to being calculated according to NHL revenues instead of debt the players owe the owners.

Bettman has stated we’ll know more in June after total playoff revenue is included in the NHL’s revenue figures. For now, though, the cap is only going up by $1,000,000 to $83.5 million. The extra three million would certainly help but the Oilers are at $77.53 million in spending for next season right now – and they have seven players whose contracts are up that need to be re-upped. This means that unless the cap goes up more the Oilers will have $5.97 million in cap space to re-sign said players and one of the guys who needs a new contract is Evan Bouchard, who’s bound to actually take up at least 67% of said cap space (that’s a minimal cap hit of $4,000,000, it could be larger).

It’s also worth noting that the LTIR space of Mike Smith ($2.2 million) and Oscar Klefbom ($4.167 million) is no longer available as those contracts have expired. That’s over $6,000,000 in cap space that has just evaporated overnight.

Unless Holland wants to dismantle the roster in unpalatable ways, the easiest way to get around this is to acquire another LTIR contract. Tampa Bay and Vegas have been doing this for years, so why can’t we? Personally, I vote for trading for Shea Weber’s contract from Arizona, that would be $7.857143 million in LTIR cap space for the next three seasons, and hopefully, by that time the cap will have gone up enough that the Oilers won’t need LTIR cap space anymore. Hopefully, they’ll be able to shave some cap space at the bottom of the roster. For example, want to re-up Mattias Janmark? Why not offer him $2,000,000 over two seasons? That decreases his cap hit from last season by $250k. How about Nick Bjugstad at $850K per season for two years? That’s another $50K off his cap hit from last year. Derek Ryan? How about $900K for one season? $350K off his cap hit from last season.

There, in just three examples I’ve already shaved $650K of cap space off the cap without giving up any assets – and that will at least give Holland some wiggle room that he can apply to players that will get a raise like Bouchard, Ryan Mcleod, or Klim Kostin.

Of course, if the cap increase quadruples in size that will change the game a bit as the Oilers would have almost $9,000,000 in cap space instead of almost $6,000,000. They might or might not get everyone signed for that money – or at the very least wouldn’t need as much LTIR cap space.

I’d probably still trade for it just in case we needed it and it would certainly help us at the next trade deadline with a great rental.

The Oilers also get the buyouts of Andrej Sekera and the retained salary of Milan Lucic off the books, saving us $2.25 million off the cap, but considering that Stuart Skinner’s extension will give him $1,815,834 in extra cap hit per season that pretty much wipes that out. Still, we have another $434,166 in cap space than we would’ve had – I guess that’s better than nothing. Gives the Oilers a little more cap room – maybe one more callup from the farm team or trade deadline acquisition.

However he does it, this will be a question Ken Holland will have to answer sooner rather than later.

Most Oiler fans will probably know the story of Jack Campbell this season. He was signed to a hefty $5,000,000 per season to be the starter but struggled out of the gate and was rather inconsistent all season, although at the end he seemed to find his game and in limited sample size in the playoffs did very well coming on in relief of Skinner.

The question Ken Holland will have to answer is what to do with the player. The book on him was he was very inconsistent when he was in Toronto too, so this is not a new problem for the player. The change of scenery, at least in season one, had limited success. He has another four seasons remaining on his contract, and although publicly Holland has said he will be going into next season with this same tandem of Skinner-Campbell he would be doing the team a disservice if he didn’t kick tires on goalies that would be obviously upgrades on the position that would actually be available – and he’s got a once in a lifetime opportunity on some of these guys. The two biggest names would be Jusse Saros in Nashville or Jordan Binnington in St. Louis, but if word on the street is correct and Winnipeg may start a rebuild soon then maybe the Oilers make a play for Connor Hellybuyck. You could even investigate signing Joonas Korpisalo as a free agent and then trading Campbell in a different transaction.

Of course, there’s a case to be made for keeping Campbell, too. But regardless of whether Campbell stays or goes, Holland should at least consider upgrading the position seeing as how he has a huge opportunity with some of the clubs just starting rebuilds.

Now you might ask yourself, “Who’s this guy and why does he matter?” Well, if you need to know who he is, take a look here. The reason why Niemelainen is explicitly mentioned is he is a player whose contract converts from a two-way contract to a one-way NHL contract next season, and the problem is that Niemelainen did not establish himself as a full-time NHLer last season. He lost out on the spot first to Ryan Murray and then to Philip Broberg.

He has gotten a couple of call-ups over the last two seasons and has shown himself as a guy who can handle easy competition defensively in the bottom pairing and as a big body that can throw his weight around. That’s a fine player to have around but the problem is he’s a guy who hasn’t yet established himself as an NHL regular so unless he makes the team out of camp and stays there all season – at the very least sharing the spot with Broberg – then if you send him back down to Bakersfield and you want to bring him back up, he has to pass through waivers first, and then another team can just take him for free.

Expect Holland to sign at least one depth blueliner for next season, but Niemelainen would be a depth piece we could lose for nothing.

If Holland wants to hedge his bets he could trade the player somewhere else for a fourth or perhaps a third-round pick and replenish our draft capital in the upcoming draft as we don’t have a third-round pick in it (gone to Arizona as part of the Nick Bjugstad trade at the deadline) or a fourth-round pick (gone to Philly in the Derick Brassard deadline deal in 2022), so it certainly wouldn’t hurt things to get a pick back for those rounds. It wouldn’t be the end of the world as I’m sure Holland will sign someone to replace Jason Demers, and Cam Dineen is a decent option for callup and Phil Kemp just wrapped up his third season in Bakersfield and he’s been making waves as well, the Oilers could give him a cup of coffee at some point next season so he’s an option for call-up as well.

Holland may decide to roll the dice on Niemo but there’s also a case to be made for trading him too. We’ll see what happens.

Remember the last offseason when Duncan Keith decided to retire rather than play out the last year of his contract? Well at that point Kulak had been acquired from the Habs at the deadline for a pick and was a great depth piece for the bottom pairing.

Once Keith retired, Holland had to decide who to replace him with, and Kulak did such a great job that Holland decided he was ready for a bigger role and more minutes, so he signed him for $2.75 million over four seasons, a great number for a guy who was going to play in the top four for a few seasons…..or so we thought.

Kulak struggled a little to adjust to his role at first but eventually, he was able to play more minutes against tougher competition.

Then at the deadline, Holland pulled off a stellar trade by trading a haul to Nashville for Mattias Ekholm and a sixth-round pick for Tyson Barrie, a first-round pick and a first-round prospect who had just been selected in that summer’s draft (Reid Schaefer).

Suddenly Kulak was understandably bumped back down to the bottom pairing (what else are you doing to do, stupidly play Ekholm in the bottom pairing?) and Evan Bouchard was promoted back up.

Kulak is a fine player, but if he’s going to play on the bottom pairing again he is now officially overpaid for that.  At a pro-rated $1.85 million there was no problem, but now at full seasons of almost $2.75 million, this is a bad use of cap space when the team is right up against the cap and looking to gain any foothold they can.

Trading Kulak to another team looking for depth that has room for him once again in the top four in exchange for a third or fourth-round pick or a cheaper bottom-pairing D signed at least for next season would be the ideal play here. If they trade him for a pick it shouldn’t be hard to find a replacement in free agency – you might even say bottom-of-the-roster players are Ken Holland’s specialty.

Regardless of whether he stays or goes, it will be hard to argue that paying a bottom-pairing guy $2.75 million a season is a good use of cap space.

From a hockey perspective, he’s a great piece to keep but from a cap space perspective, this is not smart. Maybe if we encounter another team crazy enough we might even be able to get a second-round pick for him……

This will be a key decision to save the team cap space.

Cody Ceci didn’t necessarily have a bad season, but he did take a step back this season – especially in the playoffs where he finished a disappointing -5 as opposed to the +11 in the regular season – and surprising since he was +4 in last year’s playoffs. His point totals also went down from 28 to 15.

That’s not good but he does have proven chemistry with Darnell Nurse and the two of them work well together – not to mention he’s signed to a very reasonable $3.25 million for the next two seasons and the Oilers will be hard-pressed to find an upgrade at that same money.

If you want to read a piece on this topic from the advanced stats crowd you can read it here. There will be way too much of a bidding war for Damon Severson, so no thanks to that one. Demelo fits financially but he only has one more season left on his contract so those savings will probably evaporate quickly, not to mention he’s not as surefire a top pairing option as Ceci is. Scott Mayfield is an amusing option from that article, the guy is barely a second-pairing blueliner much less a top-pairing guy.

I actually wrote a blog on another option that might be the most realistic from a hockey perspective that will come out in the near future – Colton Parayko. You can read all about my thoughts on him when it comes out.

Something Holland may consider.