5. Ty Emberson
I can't believe I'm saying this about a guy who is essentially barely a toddler as far as his time in the NHL goes, but Ty Emberson has done a great job at carving himself out a role with the Oilers, even if it's only to patrol the right side of the third pairing. The signing of Klingberg may bump him out of the lineup, but that of course remains to be seen. Right now Emberson is making it tough to take him out of the lineup.
Emberson is relatively early on in his NHL career - only 75 games in, a mere five games away from graduating from Group 6 UFA status to a full fledged RFA. With such a low GP number, we still don't completely know what we have with him yet and won't know for quite some time, as he's got a ways to go before he cracks the 200-game mark.
What we do know is that it looks like we have basically a younger version of Kulak in Emberson. Since his rookie season in San Jose last year (Emberson was the centerpiece coming back when the Oilers traded away Cody Ceci to the Sharks) Emberson has improved his +/- from -4 to +1. We can partially attribute this to moving from a rebuilding team to a cup contender - which also explains why Emberson's ice time was cut from 18:33 in San Jose to 14:53 with Edmonton. Talk about throwing a young rookie to wolves, playing him almost 20 minutes a night at his age is not a good idea. It's no wonder Knoblauch has paired him with the verteran Kulak for the most part - the two are proving formidable against soft competition and both have done spells on the second pairing with Nurse.
There are three tools that Emberson has in his toolbox that make him a solid bottom pairing guy right now, and possibly more in the future if he survives the trade deadline and gets re-signed. First of all, Emberson has a physical side to him, as he currently sits third on the team in hits with 70 and fifth on the team in blocked shots with 61.
The most surprising skill that Emberson brings to the table, though, is penalty killing. Like Brown, Emberson is a regular on the first unit PK, so much so that he plays an average of 1:46 on the PK per game, good for second (!) on the team. Only Mattias Ekholm plays more on the PK than Emberson does on a per game basis. Just like Janmark, Emberson plays roughly 10-15 percent of his minutes on the PK - a ballsy thing to do for Knoblauch, but you can't really argue much with the results. At the beginning of the season the Oilers PK was hovering around 30th in the league, and now it's 24th, which means this is one area of their game where the Oilers are poised to finish strong. If Emberson is providing quality minutes on the PK, then who am I to argue with Knoblauch's decision to staple him there over everyone else on the roster except for Ekholm?
Again the signing of Klingberg just might be a bit of an X factor on the roster once he is ready to go, but again you certainly can't sub in Klingberg on the PK. And since Emberson is a high profile PKer already, it might be too hard to take Emberson out of the lineup in favor of Klingberg.
Regardless of whether or not he is still an Oiler after the deadline, Emberson's future looks bright at the time of this writing. Who know, maybe he'll take that right side spot next to Nurse for good if Knoblauch thinks he's ready for the tougher competition.
6. Calvin Pickard
Is there a more inopportune time for the Oilers to go through a two-game losing streak than now, right when they'd have a chance to snatch the division lead away from Vegas? Stuart Skinner has been a bit shaky at times in those two games, leading to speculation that his backup Calvin Pickard may get a higher profile for a couple of games.
It's nothing new to Pickard, who ever since taking Jack Campbell's roster spot last season has carved out a role for himself as a reliable backup goalie who's capable of answering the bell when needed. Skinner may get the majority of the goalie headlines during the season, but Pickard stays under the radar as the ace in the hole. Although Pickard's stats are nothing to write home about at this point in time - a 2.53 GAA and an .897 save percentage, his reliability is shown that by the numbers he wins more starts per capita than Skinner does. Take a look for yourself:
Skinner - 32 games played, 32 starts, 18 wins - 56.25% wins in his starts
Pickard - 17 games played, 15 starts, 11 wins - 73.3% wins in his starts
Granted, you might call that a statistical anomaly based on a small sample size, so let's look at last season's numbers then as well.
Pickard - 23 games played, 20 starts, 12 wins - 60% wins in his starts
If you want to sum up the two seasons together, that's still a 65.7 percent wins in his starts, pretty good. I don't know about you, but I'd take a backup goalie who wins 65 percent of his starts any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
The big X factor - in the short term at least anyway - will be whether or not prospect goalie Olivier Rodrigue gets time with the Oilers or not. He's been making waves as a top 20 goalie in save percentage in the AHL for months, so it's only a matter of time before he gets a look and has an opportunity to unseat Pickard.