One thing about a self-professed Stanley Cup contender bowing out in the first round of the playoffs, it raises all kinds of questions.<\/p>\n
What went wrong? Whose fault was it? What are they going to do about it? Can you believe Vegas? Is this the year Rogers Place beer hits $20 a glass?<\/p>\n
With the Edmonton Oilers<\/a> reeling from a lopsided loss to Anaheim, while watching the division rival Golden Knights laugh their way to the Stanley Cup Final, it\u2019s going to be a long and dramatic summer.<\/p>\n Some questions leading into it are in order. Here is a handful in Part One of a two-part series: What Are The Oilers Thinking?<\/p>\n How good is Tristan Jarry? If the Oilers don\u2019t get their goaltending shored up, it won\u2019t matter who their new coach is or what else happens in the off-season. Right now they\u2019ve got Jarry (two more years left at $5.4 million per year) and an opening for either a starter or a backup. But that\u2019s the issue. They don\u2019t know if they need a $2 million backup or a $6 million starter, which they can\u2019t afford. Will Jarry come back a new man and singlehandedly shore up the crease? Or does he pick up where he left off last season? Waiting until Jarry gives them an answer a month into the season is too late.<\/p>\n If the Oilers make the reasonable assumption that they can\u2019t risk the most important season in the last 40 years on Jarry being their guy, that means unloading his contract (which won\u2019t be easy) and finding a bona fide Stanley Cup calibre goalie (which will be even harder than unloading the contract). Can they pull something like that off?<\/p>\n Do they re-sign Connor Ingram and risk maintaining the status quo from last year, believing the team\u2019s renewed interest in defending and a taskmaster of a new head coach will bring the goaltending numbers up?<\/p>\n What about the UFAs? Connor Murphy and Jason Dickinson, a steady defensive defenceman and a strong checking centre, were two very solid additions by general manager Stan Bowman and it\u2019s important to keep them. Will Bowman be able to pay the asking prices? If not, that means even more holes that need to be patched.<\/p>\n Kasperi Kapanen\u2019s stock shot up in the playoffs and Jack Roslovic is a good regular season player. How do they fit into the plans?<\/p>\n What happens on July 1? This is where the Oilers made some of their biggest mistakes in recent years. Last summer it was Andrew Mangiapane and Trent Frederic. The year before that it was Jeff Skinner and Viktor Arvidsson. Bowman needs to be careful, another big mistake could be fatal, but he can\u2019t be gun shy.<\/p>\n Bowman has the advantage of not needing to find an impact player, Edmonton has plenty of those, just a couple of solid value signings to bolster the middle part of the club. Will he still try for a home run when some solid doubles will suffice?<\/p>\n How good are their memories? The players all talked a good game about committing to team defence and puck management and how setting a standard early in the regular season really matters. But for three years in a row they eased into the season like it was a warm bath and the guys at top of the roster fully admit they need to be setting a better example. Will we see a different Oilers team in October?<\/p>\n Who will be the breakthrough players? The Oilers need somebody young, fast and cheap to fill a key spot next year.<\/p>\n Who is this year\u2019s Matt Savoie? Ike Howard had 24 goals and 26 assists in 47 AHL games last year and Quinn Hutson is coming off a 30-goal season in Bakersfield. Will Josh Samanski take a big step forward now that he has a season under his belt? Can Maxim Berezkin make the jump from KHL to Edmonton\u2019s bottom six?<\/p>\n What happens in Vegas? The NHL said the Golden Knights are well within their rights to sit Bruce Cassidy for a whole year if they feel like it. How long are they going to play this out? Will they wait the Oilers out all summer? Are they just toying with Edmonton, laughing at the tire fire they started before eventually freeing him up after the Playoffs?<\/p>\n How naive was it on the part of Bowman and Jeff Jackson to think that the answer would be yes to this question: \u2018Hey Vegas, this is Edmonton calling. Would you mind handing over, for free, the missing piece that might help us eliminate you from the playoffs next year?\u2019<\/p>\n When are they hiring a coach? That the Oilers haven\u2019t been doing much in the way of interviewing suggests they are still holding out hope for Cassidy. That\u2019s fine. There is no rush, but ideally they should have somebody in place by July 1 (free agents like to know who the coach will be before they sign somewhere).<\/p>\n Who is their second choice? Or third? Peter Laviolette and Craig Berube bring many of the same qualities Cassidy does. They are hard-nosed veterans who preach defence and the team concept and aren\u2019t afraid to take a firm tone with star players, which is exactly what the Oilers need. Does management commit to one right away or do they play the waiting game?<\/p>\n E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don\u2019t miss the news you need to know \u2014 add EdmontonJournal.com<\/a> and EdmontonSun.com<\/a> to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters<\/a>.
You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post, and 13 other Canadian news sites. The Edmonton Journal<\/a> | The Edmonton Sun<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One thing about a self-professed Stanley Cup contender bowing out in the first round of the playoffs, it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1130,18349,53,948,652,52,263,20285,653,648,1134,1129,655,943,7153,5503,1142,946,3073,1132,27155],"class_list":["post-63248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-andrew-mangiapane","tag-bruce-cassidy","tag-connor-ingram","tag-connor-murphy","tag-curtis-lazar","tag-edmonton","tag-edmonton-oilers","tag-golden-knights","tag-jack-roslovic","tag-jason-dickinson","tag-jeff-skinner","tag-josh-samanski","tag-kasperi-kapanen","tag-matt-savoie","tag-rogers-place","tag-stan-bowman","tag-stanley-cup","tag-trent-frederic","tag-tristan-jarry","tag-viktor-arvidsson","tag-will-bowman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}