With today's trade and multiple strikeouts on the UFA front, Oilers fans are going to have to start thinking about entering the season with an extremely young player in the top 6F.Or Geoff Sanderson.
Shawn Horcoff and Ales Hemsky should make up 2/3's of the top line, and a second line of Stoll, Torres and someone would leave the 3line to Moreau, Pisani and either Pouliot or Reasoner.
Let's say that the Oilers come out of the UFA signing season with only Petr Sykora and then are forced to deal young assets for a solution on defense and in goal.
The Oilers MIGHT enter the 07-08 season with lines that look something like this:
Horcoff-Sanderson-Hemsky
Stoll-Torres-Sykora
Pouliot-Moreau-Pisani
Reasoner-Nilsson-Thoresen
The other options would be elevating Torres to the top line, moving Pisani to 1line LW and giving Robert Nilsson a chance to play with the big boys.
I think Kevin Lowe better find another top 6 winger pdq, because the problem is that the Oilers don't have anyone from the farm/junior/trade at the deadline who can be that big time producer while making 1M or less.
They had a bunch of guys doing more than they were earning in 05-06, but right now this team features a bunch of guys up front being paid in full (save Torres and that day is coming right soon).
Sanderson on the top line makes me want to throw up...
ReplyDeleteI posted it at HF, but I'll say it here too:
The good news is:
We need a defenseman, a backup goalie and a "good" winger. Easy solutions for all of those:
1. Hejda.
2. Sanford or Toivonen.
3. Guerin or Bertuzzi or Nagy or Sykora or Johnson or Zubrus.
The bad news?
We need a replacement for Ryan Smyth. The only player that was left on the market in Kariya is now gone. So we need to acquire this player, without giving up anything more than one of our young D and futures.
Well, we all figured that Nilsson was going to have to get a shot sometime. His future wouldn't be looking mighty bright if he spent another year toiling in the minors.
ReplyDeleteStauffer is saying Nylander is an Oiler.
ReplyDeletePlay him with 10 and 83?
Sykora just went to the Penguins.
ReplyDeleteYup, Sykora is gone. That's a shocker.
ReplyDelete71 played with Malkin in the RSL during the lockout season. He was raving about him in the preseason. Him to Pit seemed to just make sense. Can't see them taking Whitney or Gonchar off the PP point though so I'd imagine 71's totals will fall in that regard.
ReplyDelete