Question Marks, Part I

Lowetide has pretty well finished his annual “Reasonable Expectations” series, and doesn’t think the Oilers look like a playoff team. On the other hand, Ender has historically maintained an optimistic perspective, and can see enough talent on this team for them to make the playoffs, and maybe even manage an upset once they get there. My problem lies in the fact that I kind of agree with both of them, or more accurately, can see where each are coming from in their respective assessments. As composed, this is a bubble team: they could certainly make it in if everything breaks their way, but the bubble is a hot competition these days, and they could plummet like a stone if things fail to click, and frankly, I don’t know what to believe. Part of this is (dis)informed by the fact that I checked out in February due to work and school, and haven’t really mustered the will to consistently give a shit since, and the rest is an admitted bit of laziness: I do enough reading and statistical analysis in my day job that I can’t be arsed to do more for the sake of a side project (though at some point, I will get around to running some stats on all that FO% vs. Pts% data that I’ve got lying around). I’ve poked my head in occasionally at LT’s and C&B, but mostly have stuck to the whole-League blogs that don’t require me to think so much.

But I decided that at some point, I should really start engaging myself with the team again, so I figured I’d take a quick peek at the standing roster and see where the question marks lie, so as to gain a better understanding of what we’re up against. For staters, I count four players who seem to have gained one-year reprieves with the firing of head coach Craig MacTavish: Dustin Penner, Robert Nilsson, Marc-Antoine Pouliot, and Rob Schremp.

Penner has a number of defenders on the ‘sphere, none more so than Derek “Coach PB” Zona, who’s written a small tome on the subject. Suffice to say, I think that if Penner can consistently apply himself physically — not in terms of battering guys, which isn’t really his game, but just in terms of raw applied physics, i.e. mass and leverage — he should work out just fine on the top line. (The unstated implication with all these IF-THEN statements, by the way, is the “ELSE trade_in_january = 1;” portion.) He should also go back to seeing more time on the PP, from which he was inexplicably removed for much of last year; he’s got the frame and the hands to do the job in front of the net, though that’ll also require the PP to be more balanced, in terms of both Souray lasers up high and Hemsky craftiness down low. He’ll probably continue to be a piñata in certain sections of the fanbase, but I think if anyone’s going to get the most out of him, it’s an old hand like Pat Quinn.

Nilsson has always had the talent to be a second-line, soft-minutes type of guy, who will occasionally blow your damned mind with how awesome he is, but will also disappear often enough that he leaves you wanting more than the 60 points he’ll probably top out at. Sort of a poor man’s Alexei Kovalev. Or Kent Nilsson. Anyway, as it stands right now, I see Nilsson as the seventh man in the top six, with Horcoff, Hemsky, Penner, Cogliano, Gagner, and O’Sullivan all standing ahead of him in no particular order, and that probably means press box time at some point this year. Out of everyone, he and Schremp seem like the most obvious trade bait, though who’s going to give up what we need (a veteran checking centre) for what we have (a couple of soft wingers), I haven’t a clue. The best argument for him is that he’s cheap ($2M cap hit), and that he can’t really be as bad as he was last season, especially with that glaringly small number of secondary assists. Even granting that we probably still talk about primary and secondary assists in too simplistic of terms, and that different styles of player will naturally accumulate more of one than the other, it seems wildly unlikely that he winds up with that few again if he gets significant minutes with the Kid Line. Maybe the real question is, will he impress the coach enough to earn the opportunity? Will the opportunity come even if he does prove himself?

Pouliot is a bit of an enigma. He was Sidney Crosby’s linemate in junior, in case you hadn’t heard, but he was actually drafted before Strong Muscular Legs even entered the Q (2003). He’s shown flashes of brilliance at times (Dennis’s favourite thing to cite is “the penalty-shot game against Toronto on Hockey Night”), in which he was, in fact, really good. He’s also shown flashes of rookie-level failure to read the game, such as when he went on a terrible change against Detroit that ended with a last-minute goal and an Oilers loss. It’s been suggested that maybe part of his struggles, most evident in the early season, are due to conditioning. We should be able to scratch that one off the list this year. It’s also been suggested that maybe he’s not happy with his role, backed up by the fact that he balked at a fairly flattering comparison to Guy Carbonneau, a three-time Stanley Cup champion, the man who battled Wayne Gretzky to a standstill in the ’93 Finals, and the namesake for the Q’s version of the Selke. That one’s less easy to deal with, and one has to hope that maybe a fresh voice telling him basically the same thing, and another year of maturity, will correct that. (Or failing that, competition from Patrick O’Sullivan. At least, this is what people tell me.) Whatever the case, it seems clear that the Oilers have put their eggs predominantly in his basket, whether out of stringent belief in his abilities or the simple lack of external options (Oilblog favourite Blair Betts recently told Dan Tencer that the Oilers weren’t an option). Bonus stat: last year, Pouliot was third amongst regular centres on the team, winning 48.3% of his 211 face-offs. It’s not spectacular, but put against the abysmal numbers of Gagner and Cogliano, it’s better than a swift kick in the ass.

Finally, we have Sugartits, Hockey Jesus, Banana Hammock, Robimus Prime, and Popcorn (wait, really?). Schremp has long been derided in the ‘sphere as much for the worshipful following he has at Hockey’s Future as for his actual on-ice failings, to the point where he has more Oilblog nicknames than he does NHL points (and almost as many as he has NHL games). Last year was not kind to Our Man Robert, following up a PPG season in the A in 2007-08 with a 42-pointer, sullying what was a fairly decent cup of coffee in the Bigs (three points in four games, not looking completely awful). Now, granted, the entire Falcons club, from top to bottom, had an abysmal year, one of those years you’re happy to escape from in one piece with the hopes that next year can’t possibly be that bad. But between that, and the difficulties the Oilers had in getting him to sign his second contract, and you have to think that this is shit-or-get-off time for our erstwhile Lord and Saviour. With Kyle Brodziak gone and Liam Reddox’s job potentially in jeopardy, there are openings on the fourth line to be had for Schremp, Jean-Francois “Mr. Zero” Jacques¹, and Gilbert Brule. The problem Schremp faces, however, is similar to the one that Nilsson faces: he’s got to not only give ‘er every night and make the most of his situation, but that he’s got to root for multiple failures further up the lineup in order to play his “optimal” position, unless Quinn is more of a line-juggler than I’d previously imagined. Oh, and then there’s the fact that he generates nearly all of his offence on the power play. While he’s got as much of a fresh start as everyone else I’ve prattled on about, much like Nilsson, Schremp looks like prime trade bait, though unless he’s thrown in on a larger deal, he’s probably not going to fetch more than a pick at this point. Update: Especially not when he says dumb shit like that. Jesus Christ, Robbie.

To be clear, I’m not talking about J.F. Jacques and Gilbert Brule in this for a reason. While a lot of virtual ink has been spilled about Jacques’s struggles to convert his AHL offence into NHL numbers, and Brule’s suffered from a combination of injuries and excessive expectations with the Blue Jackets organization, they never seemed like they were in MacTavish’s doghouse the way these four guys were. Penner and Pouliot were press-boxed on multiple occasions, which did not necessarily correlate with their on-ice performance, Schremp was pretty much told through the media that MacT was done with him, and Nilsson bounced from the second to fourth line with great frequency. Certainly, the new coaching staff should give all of them a new lease on life, but if they don’t perform up to reasonable expectations this time, they should have no one left to blame but themselves.

¹ Yes, I know, he finally scored a goal last year. Shut up.

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