There's no Hedbergian twist here, they don't still do too.
The problem was the enormous imbalance between right and left shooting defencemen drafted by Edmonton, constructing what was dubbed by Allan Mitchell as the Leftorium:
Note not only the quantity, but the quality of the imbalance. Not only was there only one right-shooter selected in four drafts, the only two first-rounders are left shot guys and, adding up the values via Blue Bullet Report's Chart, the ratio of value spending between both sides is about sixty-eight to one.
The result? The NHL starting six's right side is a traded-for guy, a college free agent, and a left-handed veteran free agent playing his off-side.
Chiarelli walked the walk when it came to the lefty-righty paradigm, and as I write this, we stand with this:
Again, note the quality and quantity.
The only elite prospect, and the only one further than that who can be (reasonably, arbitrated by myself) expected to have a real shot at being a top-4 NHL defencemen, are both right shots. By the previous methodology using draft value, starting in 2015 the Oilers spent six picks on lefties, six on righties, and a value of ~8 on left, ~29 on right(the value is mostly Bouchard at 23.6, just as in the exercise prior the value was mostly Klef; Nurse).
Let's think about the NHL group of Edmonton defensemen as a series of probabilities.
Right now, on the right side there's Larsson who can complete a top four pairing, Benning who has done so in part in his rookie year, and then again in part of last year, and then Russell who can play the third pairing okay.
Larsson has a contract that runs through 2021, and since his value largely doesn't manifest itself in the box score, should actually not warrant that much of a raise. A comparable points-wise. age-wise and draft-position-wise is Karl Alzner, who hit unrestricted free-agency last summer as a 20-point, 28 year-old, former top-5 pick defenceman and signed a contract at 4.625MM for 5 years. The salary cap was 78 million at the time, making that contract roughly 6% of the cap. These financial details and Larsson's age make the future of the Oilers D corps about finding one more top-four capable guy on the right side. Outside of injury, the probability Larsson can be kept on board and contributing long-term as one of the top-four RHD is honestly near one-hundred percent.
Then comes the first relevant probability: Is Matt Benning going to be a top-four defenceman?
He's been one at times. The only thing flashy about Benning's play is his trademark open-ice hits, but good things generally happen when he's on the ice, particularly so in his opening campaign when he replaced Russell on a pairing with Sekera. His is a contribution that commonly falls under the radar, I'm often critical of Peter Chiarelli, and when his supporters come to the aid of his reputation they always(as they should) point to his good deals, typically Maroon and Talbot, but Matt Benning was a college free-agent that added value in a tough role in a rookie season, and that's something, and he'll be something for awhile and I'd count him as the best acquisition or tied with Talbot.
He's the 97th defenceman by Corsica player ratings, he's a projected +5.63 goals against replacement by Chace McCallum's model, he's a positive WAR guy by EvolvingWild's model and in general he just looks good by my parsing of the data as well. If he's 2RD on your team I wouldn't say that's a strength in the roster, but he doesn't appear to be a drag on anything there. There's still not a ton of track-record to him, though, and we don't have a solid idea what his 'normal' is because of how hard it was to evaluate defenders last year under the 5v5 defensive scheme deployed, and the concussion trouble the year before. I would put him as having an above 50% chance of contributing league average level play on the second pairing for some years to come.
Then comes the hole at the third pairing, currently filled by off-handed Kris Russell. Truth be told there's more third pairing defencemen in the NHL than there is jobs, and most guys of Evan Bouchard's pedigree will make it at least that far. Ethan Bear has a number of things to work on to get to the NHL, then a number more to make it to second pairing level. The game here is you hope that the probability of Evan Bouchard becoming second pairing plus the probability of Ethan Bear becoming second pairing adds up to, at least, the probability of Matt Benning not being second pairing. That way the bet is hedged. Past that, I think where we stand right now the chance that either Ethan Bear or Evan Bouchard becomes a third pairing RHD is near certain or has a sum over 100%, and what this all adds up to is there's a lot that has to go wrong before there's a serious, debilitating vacancy at RHD in the Oilers system.
The age of all these guys being <26 means you can probably leave that alone.
Now, on the left side you've got something interesting going on. in 2016-17, Oscar Klefbom performed at what appeared to be a top pairing level. In 2017-18, Darnell Nurse performed at what appeared to be a top-four level. Add this up and hedge it with the chances Sekera recovers, and we're looking at those two top-four left shot spots being pretty reasonably filled.
What about that Sekera, though? He's got three more years at five and a half million per, and his health is in question. This year, if he recovers fully, the Oilers will have a miles-better third pairing lefty than most of the league.
Marcus Petersson, Alex Goligoski, Nathan Beaulieu, Ryan Murray, Brett Kulak, Erik Gustafsson, Mark Methot, Jon Ericsson, MacKenzie Weegar, Oscar Fantenberg, Nick Seeler, Jordie Benn, Egor Yakolev, Matt Irwin, Thomas Hickey, Ben Smith, Matt Borowiecki, Robert Hagg, Jack Johnson, Brendan Dillon, Jay Bouwmeetster, Braydon Coburn, Ben Hutton, Ben Chiarot.
Those are the names of the third-pairing left-side guys that I think, to varying degrees, can not reasonably be believed to deliver circa 2017 Andrei Sekera level of play in the upcoming NHL season.
There's 25 of them.
That means there's cover at this position. The Edmonton Oilers are not losing ground on the rest of the NHL by not upgrading here with some immediacy, and the on the other side of the same coin have expiring rights to that luxury via Sekera aging out, and the heaviness of his contract in this team's salary cap context.
This makes it a prime candidate for a well-timed upgrade via ELC.
Upgrading a position with an entry-level contract is extremely hard to pull off without either having lottery-level talent coming into the position, below replacement level talent pre-existing in the position, or both.
The Edmonton Oilers upgraded at 1C with an ELC, you've seen what that looks like.
In a less extreme example, look at the top lines of the Colorado Avalanche and the Boston Bruins: Two pre-existing duos with thirds that were upgraded via elite ELC talent. Typically rosters need to be balanced by having units rounded out by closer to replacement-level talent, but the financial power of the ELC allows for the opposite. When Mikko Rantanen has to sign a new contract, or the Avalanche in general get closer to the cap, he may eventually have to be moved off of that line in the talent crunch that comes with the cap crunch.
The Oilers can do this on a defense pairing: Whatever the sum of Matt Benning, Evan Bouchard and Ethan Bears' career arcs is in a few years has one of them sitting on the third pairing, already being an above-average contributor at that roster spot.
This is where a best player available, say an incomplete but elite talent on left defense can morph the pairing into a terror when the spot in the order for them is considered. In the mold of a Sam Girard or a Ty Smith, a player who drops out of their talent tier at the draft simply because they shoot left and they're not big could be had by the Oilers at the mid-first-round (I believe the Oilers could finish anywhere from 10th-24h in the league this year) and be ready to step in at 21 years of age, and the defence corps iced could resemble something like this:
Klefbom - Larsson
Nurse - Bouchard/Bear/Benning
BPA - Bouchard/Bear/Benning
All this, in a league where a Stanley Cup Finalist can lose the entire series off of a weak-spot third pairing, while paradoxically getting there in spite of them. This configuration, however, ensures that there is would be no pairing that the coaching staff is afraid to send over the boards, no situation where the top-four is run ragged from many difficult hours in the first three rounds of the playoffs.
I don't believe the Oilers will be in a position to draft a real difference-maker forward for the remainder of McDavid's godsent contract. Scouting departments have forwards near nailed-down, with most of the river-pushers going in the very top end of the draft, even the mythical Johnny Gaudreau type third round selections are going extinct as teams wise up to offense predicting offense.
This means that if there's going to be a third line of forwards that push the goalshare in a significant way, it's going to have to involve the continued development of Jesse Puljujarvi into a force capable of levelling the opposition as an individual influence.
Where the efficiency still exists in the draft, where talent drops out of tiers most often is leftie D height optional, and the Oilers have the precise opportunity to ice a level of balance in their blue-line group that ensures expensive free agents and elusive trade targets need not apply.
When I was watching the Hlinka-Gretzky, truth be told none of the Dmen particularly stood out. As the year unfolds, you can be sure that I will be referencing this concept when narrowing down the draft options for 2019.
Names of interest, just based on the data:
Yegor Bryutov - light Russian, was 16 for most of an entire year that he put up crazy points for his age in the MHL. 3rd ranked D by Emmanuel Perry, seldom mentioned elsewhere
Bowen Byram - may go too high, Vancouver Giants guy, very good numbers for a late-birthday draft-1 defenceman last year
Cam York - part of the ridiculous US 2001 group, fits our profile near perfectly. Of all listed, you'll likely hear the most about him.
Henry Thrun - the biggest of this list, numbers roughly in line so far with McAvoy and Hanifin, another American 01.
Kim Nousianen - November guy, good numbers and he fits our profile, we'll find out really early from the math whether he's worth the first rounder because of his maturity relative to the other guys.
Jordan Spence - another guy that, despite not being older for the class will need to establish himself early as it's his rookie CHL year.
I'll be updating on this phenomenon, and depending on how sour the year goes I'll be more literally applying the ELC upgrade concept to left wing instead, as noted before it's gated by draft position. Hypothetically duos of McDavid and Draisaitl with existing wingers like Yamamoto and Puljujarvi could be rounded out and turned up to ridiculous with an elite third talent.
From there I'll look at the before and afters of adding the Pastrnaks and Rantanens of the world to the Patrice Bergerons and Nathan MacKinnons, and project what happens when you do that except with McDavid or Draisaitl.
Which should be fun, though it would be presumably surrounded by a situation where the Oiler fans are talking draft in the middle of the year and there may be population cullings and public sacrifices, we'll have to play it by ear.
Until then, thank you for reading.
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