EDMONTON — It’s really not so much about the draft this weekend for the Edmonton Oilers, so much as it is about another milepost in their limited window to shape a roster.
Lineups are being formed across the National Hockey League, and nobody is under more pressure to fill roster gaps than the general manager whose team may well be looking at the final stages of the Connor McDavid era.
The Oilers will take second-, third-, sixth- and seventh-round picks into the weekend, but what are the chances they draft four players?
General manager Stan Bowman would trade ‘em all for the right goalie. He’d move any of them to make a Darnell Nurse trade amenable.
While GMs in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia are casually mulling a Nurse trade as one of several options, Bowman has set this thing in motion and knows he can’t bring Nurse back into his dressing room this September. He’s in a hurry to close the Nurse deal — Bowman needs to know how much cap space he has by July 1 — while all the GMs on the other end of the phone are saying, “OK, I’ll make some calls on a few other things I have going, then I’ll get back to you. Maybe…”
Meanwhile, Bowman could sign goalie Connor Ingram today for the right money — we are told that Ingram would be happy to return to Edmonton — and the Mike Babcock hire has no bearing on his return.
But Bowman is still holding out hope that he can make a bigger splash in the goalie market. We suspect that he’s talking to teams about goalies we don’t even know are available — but he’d better be careful about coming up empty in the trade market and having Ingram sign elsewhere (Ottawa?) on July 1.
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The list of potential goalies is long and full of shoulder shrugs and eyebrow raisers.
Jacob Markstrom?
The Oilers are the reason he is in New Jersey in the first place, ventilating him right out of Calgary between 2022 and 2024. But Babcock likes big goalies, and Markstrom is surely one of those.
Danil Tarasov? He’s also huge at six-foot-five, just 27 years old, and you’d always love to steal a guy from Florida — even though he’s relatively unproven. Tarasov sits among the more intriguing UFA’s out there for sure, but having said that, he hasn’t even made 100 NHL starts or played even a single playoff game.
Is that a guy you’re entrusting the Connor McDavid era to?
What about Sebastien Cossa?
After three strong years on Detroit’s AHL affiliate, he’s ready for the NHL. But is a 23-year-old with just 45 minutes of top-level action under his belt ready for four rounds of playoff hockey?
The list of goalies out there whose analytical profiles make them a nice fit for an Oilers team that gives up most of their chances off the rush is long: Tarasov, Alex Lyon, Dennis Hildeby, Joonas Korpisalo, Anton Forsberg, Charlie Lindgren, Samuel Montembault, Jake Allen, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, Philipp Grubauer, Devin Cooley (like the Calgary Flames would be willing to furnish Edmonton with its goalie).
Lots of names of good east-west guys, but there’s only one problem: What style of play will Edmonton deploy under Babcock? And what if he manages to limit the chances off the rush that have plagued the Oilers?
Now, what kind of goalie are you looking for? Or, what kind of goalie is the new coach looking for?
And is that head coach going to be as hard on the goalies at age 63 as he was all along the way? Because Babcock has a history of being very hard on his ‘tendies, and in Edmonton, the pressure is on Tristan Jarry and whoever signs up for the assignment of relegating Jarry to the backup job come playoff time.
Some head coaches defer to their goalie coaches, while others get very involved in what’s happening in the crease. Babcock is said to be the latter, while his assistant coach D.J. Smith presided over an Ottawa bench that lost faith in Filip Gustavsson, who went on to become a legit No. 1 in Minnesota.
So Bowman will ride two certainties into draft weekend:
The Nurse deal needs to get consummated by June 30, which is Tuesday. And unless he wants to risk bringing back the same tandem in goal, an unseemly reality for Oilers fans, he’d best get some work done on a goalie trade as well.
Then there’s the left-shot D-man he’ll need to replace Nurse. And that depth winger, if UFA Kasperi Kapanen moves along.
