The Oilers: The Bouchard bomb is locked and loaded

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For those of you who’ve been taking a break from social media, you might’ve missed the news that the Oilers have re-upped Evan Bouchard for two years at $7.8 million ($3.9 million per) on a bridge deal.

This was pretty close to what we expected Bouch to sign for here. After all, everyone and their dog knows the public situation the NHL’s salary cap is in – virtually all the good teams and a few bad ones are nestled right up against the cap ceiling, so the only way that young RFAs were going to get a better offer was to sign an offer sheet or get traded to a vastly inferior team, and there’s a good chance that both options would be a step back. Lots of young established RFAs knew this and took similar deals, like this guy for instance. They know the cap situation of every team so they are taking bridge deals now and over the next couple of seasons when the cap increases by an actually substantial amount that’s when they’ll cash in.

Evan Bouchard was no different. A vocal minority of Oilers fans were clamoring for the Oilers to lock him up long term just like Peter Chiarelli did with Oscar Klefbom in 2015.

Here’s the thing though – both parties have to agree to something like that. If you’re one of the dum-dums who’s clamoring for this did it ever occur to you that maybe Bouchard didn’t WANT to sign a contract like that? Maybe he read the direction of the market and fell in line with other RFAs. It’s incredibly unfair to critique Ken Holland when you don’t know the circumstances surrounding the negotiations which no one is privy to except for management, the player, and the player’s agent.

Like I said, both parties have to agree to contracts in pro sports. If one party doesn’t agree, then it’s back to the bargaining table, or work on a trade or release the player on waivers or send him down to the minors.

I have to assume that Bouchard also found it appealing to have a mentor in Mattias Ekholm next to him to help him solidify his defensive game, which in his case isn’t as bad as some players (looking at you, Erik Karlsson) but isn’t where it needs to be if the Oilers are to win the Cup and need everyone on the team regardless of role firing on all cylinders. No better mentor for him in the defensive side of things than Ekholm.

Regardless of what you think, facts and reality state that is par for the course right now. Bouchard wasn’t doing anything everyone else in his position wasn’t doing.

How this contract affects the cap situation going forward

Like 13 other teams in the league, the Oilers are now over the cap, by $390,372. The Oilers are fine for now but are not allowed to be over the cap per the CBA once the season starts. This means that as of now, the Oilers have three options available to them to become cap-compliant:

Trade for an LTIR contract, likely with Arizona, who has four of them right now. If Holland was going to go this route I have to think he’d have already gone this route by now.

2. Trade another player to get under the cap – Brett Kulak, I’m looking at you. You are making way too much to play on the third pairing right now and your likely replacement is already on the roster in Philip Broberg

3. Take the cap hit on the chin going into next year when it will be deducted off of next year’s cap hit. This seems like the most likely scenario unless there’s a trade in the works that I don’t know about yet. After all, the player’s debt to the owners from the pandemic will be paid off by the end of this season so the cap will only be determined by revenues going forward from this season. It’s not even the NHL minimum for a player, so it’s completely plausible Holland will simply do nothing and take the hit next season when he’ll be in the clear and operating with cap space to spare if projections are correct. Just to be clear, this is the punishment for exceeding the cap if the Oilers don’t change the situation before the end of training camp.

There isn’t much of a presser from Bouchard but if you want to see it, here it is.

Tyler Wright is out, and Rick Pracey in

That same article I linked to also showed a peculiar move in the scouting department. Director of Amateur Scouting Tyler Wright and the organization have “mutually parted ways” – which could mean a lot of things – and replaced by Rick Pracey, who has worked for the past nine years in Philadelphia. No word in Philly of any players drafted of note, but prior to being in Philly he was in Colorado for six years where he oversaw the drafting of players such as Nathan Mckinnon, Matt Duchene, Gabriel Landeskog, Ryan O’Reilly and Tyson Barrie.

Pracey is most known for finding gems in the lower rounds of the draft. My theory is this guy became available so perhaps that’s what prompted the “mutual parting of ways” with Wright – management said we’d rather have this guy at the helm so you can either leave voluntarily or we can fire you publicly, and Wright chose the former.

The timing is very peculiar though as Wright has only been determining the picks for four seasons, and most draft picks usually take about five years to develop, so we never really had enough time to determine how good of a head scout Wright was.

Ultimately this is one of those closed-door decisions that we’ll never know what really went on.

I suppose when the Oilers hired Jeff Jackson as CEO some change was inevitable in the franchise.

Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports /

Arizona Coyotes purchase land for a new arena

The NHL’s biggest gongshow operating out of Arizona right now has taken a step closer to relevancy as owner Alex Meruelo has signed a letter of intent to purchase some land in Mesa, Arizona which is just east of Phoenix. I hope this is a better place for the Coyotes, but they’re not even committing to building in Mesa yet as they’re still considering sites within Phoenix itself as well as Scottsdale.

I am not optimistic that hockey can actually work in Arizona, as this may just be moving the problem to a different place within the state, but good for them if they can pull it off.

The Coyotes franchise has gone through a carousel of owners (including the NHL itself for a time), GMs, coaches, and players over the years as unlike in places like Tampa Bay, Dallas, and Nashville, there hasn’t been hope of a competitive team to draw anything resembling human beings to games. They’ve rarely made the playoffs since moving from Winnipeg, and the best they’ve done in their history is making it to the third round…..once. Mostly they’ve usually been in and gone in the first round with a whimper – and that’s when they make the playoffs in the first place.

They’ve actually got a pretty good young team with several players of relevance and a rich cache of draft picks – they have in the second round, for the next three years – three picks in 2024, four picks in 2025, and another three picks in 2026, plus three third-round picks in 2024, plus all of their own first-round picks for 2024-2026.

All of this hasn’t taken them back to the playoffs yet but perhaps this is another step towards that. The NHL should’ve moved this clown show to another place that already had a fan base in place for the franchise – like Seattle already had with the Kraken. That was a good hockey market.

So far the NHL hasn’t made hockey work in Arizona and all it’s done most years is drag down the NHL’s revenues. We’ll see, but Tempe already rejected their request for funding for a new arena there, and Glendale already kicked them out for not paying their rent – sorry “accounting errors (yeah, right….).”

I guess they’ve already tried west of Phoenix in Glendale, they might as well try east and see if that works better.

Ottawa is two weeks away from new majority ownership

The NHL’s executive committee officially approved the purchase of the Ottawa Senators from the estate of terrible now-deceased owner Eugene Melnyk, who’s probably hanging out with Harold Ballard in hell.

In the interim, his estate has owned the team, and the owners of his estate are his daughters, Anna and Olivia Melnyk. As part of the deal, they will both retain a 10% ownership stake in the team. According to Forbes Business of Hockey list, as of 2022, the Sens are the 24th most valuable franchise in the NHL (for the record the Oilers are seventh…..how times have changed financially for the NHL in the last 30 years) and if you take their total revenue and deduct the operating income from it, that means the Sens are showing a $110 million profit.

This means that in the coming weeks not only do Anna and Olivia split a payday of somewhere close to $1,000,000,000 but if the Sens balance sheet holds up they’ll still be bringing in 10% of a $110 million pie, which equals out to about $5.5 million apiece, $11 million total, all for an investment that they never paid a penny into and will require minimal work from them going forward.

Nice payday if you can get it. All they have to do is not screw it up by getting greedy and fighting each other over it.

But soon-to-be new majority owner Michael Andlauer will have other minority partners in his ownership group. Those will be:

• Local businessman Jeff York, a partner in Farm Boy, and his 20-plus local investors.
• The Malhotra family, owners of Ottawa home builder Claridge Homes.
• Paul and Michael Paletta of Burlington-based Alinea Group holdings, who have been partnered with Andlauer since he initially pursued the franchise last November.
• Oshawa Generals owner Rocco Tullio is also believed to be involved with Andlauer’s group.

Jeff Petry traded twice in less than two weeks

One-time Oilers defenseman Jeff Petry has had a somewhat amusing trip around the NHL this offseason. He was included as a piece in the crazy Erik Karlsson trade to Pittsburgh that was between the Penguins, the Habs, and the Sharks.

Petry was one of the warm bodies that went to Montreal in the trade. But lest Habs fans got nostalgic for a player coming back for a second tour of duty, nine days later Petry was traded to Detroit in exchange for a prospect and a fourth-round pick.

25% of Petry’s $6.25 million contract will be retained by the Penguins ($1.562500 million) while 50% of his now modified cap hit will be retained by Montreal in the Detroit trade ($2,343,750), which brings his cap hit in his new home in Detroit down to the same.

This means Petry will now be paid by three different teams for the remainder of his contract. I wonder if that’s some sort of NHL record….I couldn’t find any information on this when researching this piece.

In Detroit Petry will solidify the second pairing on the right side for the Wings with Ben Chiarot on port. Considering that Shayne Gostisbehere and Justin Holl are also new to the Wings for this upcoming season, that means the Wings have turned over literally half of their starting D corps. We’ll see if that works out for them.

Toronto Maple Laffs misinformation machine kicks into high gear

Just read this. I have no words. Toronto, stop drinking the stupid juice. And stop trying to make McDavid to Toronto happen. It’s not going to. This isn’t the first time Toronto has drank the stupid juice and I guarantee you it won’t be the last.

Personally, I always find it amusing when prospect rankings are released because let’s be honest – no one really knows the future so no one truly knows how prospects will turn out and thus it is an incredibly pointless exercise to rank them, but if that tickles your fancy you can read about a lot of them here.

Phil Kemp making waves in Bakersfield

Last year Oilers RD Vincent Desharnais was a feel-good story as he accomplished something that hasn’t been seen since bottom-six forward Kyle Brodziak in 2003 – become an NHL regular after being drafted in the seventh round.

Now granted, seventh-round picks usually have low expectations anyway but what makes this interesting is now the Oilers have a chance to do what has never been accomplished before in their history – have seventh-round picks become NHL regulars in consecutive seasons (seriously, look it up if you don’t believe me).

For you see, young right D Phil Kemp has been showing an uptick for the Condors as of last season. He’s known as a stay-at-home defenceman with leadership skills and a physical edge – but what’s putting him on the radar for a call-up is that this so-called “stay-at-home” blueliner added another tool to his toolbox – secondary offence, something that Desharnais himself doesn’t possess himself although he’s publicly said he’s working on it.

Now this doesn’t mean that Kemp is due to make the team out of camp, I’m not suggesting he’s a surefire bet to make the team out of camp by any means, but if he follows up last season with the same momentum or improved momentum this season for the Condors could he be the first callup on D and get a cup of coffee? Absolutely. Could he stay and perhaps even generate a trade for Desharnais? Perhaps. Desharnais stayed last season in his first callup, who’s to say history doesn’t repeat itself with a different player this season?

Not to mention that Desharnais may be a towering figure, but Kemp isn’t exactly a wilting flower himself – 6’3″ as opposed to Desharnais’s 6’6″ and 202 lbs as opposed to Desharnais’s 215. There’s not much of a difference there.

Desharnais is certainly working on his offence at the right time because if he struggles this season his spot in the lineup, if only temporarily, could be taken by Kemp if he can play his cards right and impresses when called up by the big club.

This’ll be an interesting battle to watch both in training camp and as the season rolls along. NHL players at the bottom of the roster get replaced by other players all the time, so it wouldn’t be unusual if Kemp usurps Desharnais in the lineup.

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