Change Is Good

A Wednesday night game in Columbus has provided the Oilers with another deserved loss and more fodder for questioning the powerplay and its ineffectiveness. It was particularly noticeable tonight that the Oilers tried to over handle the puck to gain entry into the zone. Also noticeable was how seldom the puck went below the hashmarks after we got control unless it came as a point shot. Some points on the powerplay below:

Last year one of the esteemed bloggers I frequently read (I’d bet on it being Willis, but I’m a crappy gambler) noted how good Joni Pitkanen was at gaining entry to the zone on the PP. Visnovsky has had a lot of trouble with his decisions when trying to set up a man advantage. I’ve noticed that when he gets the puck in the neutral zone on the PP that he stops moving his feet and then makes bad decisions with his passes.

As noted above, the puck almost never went below the hashmarks when we had control. This has produced an unbalanced attack and teams have no reason not to key on our point men if we give them no other threat to watch for.

Cole has been fairly ineffective on the PP so far this year. I think Penner has better hands in tight and better chemistry with Hemsky and Horc. He also led the team in PP goals last year and I think it’s time that he got some serious time on the first unit.

There is not nearly enough movement or fluidity when we have the man advantage. Players who aren’t moving are easy to cover. I like to think of a good powerplay as being an overload of information for the PK unit. One where the forwards have to fill the shooting lanes, watch for cross seam passes, stay with pinching defensemen, and do all that while staying in sync and keeping the puck carrier from walking into the middle of the ice.

It might be time to split up Visnovsky and Souray. Souray has been an absolute menace this year, especially when a man up and he should stick with the first unit. In Lubo’s place I nominate Tom Gilbert for getting minutes with the first unit. He’s showed good decision making ability when gaining entry to the zone, something which Visnovsky has not done, and showed a good ability to pinch down at the right time last year.

Sam Gagner should be on the first unit as well. In Sam we have a guy who is comfortable both on the wall being the quarterback and playing below the goal line. Having two guys on the first unit who can operate effectively from the half boards should create more fluidity in the attack and gives more options for guys to move around and find space and open up new lanes. Gagner is also good at finding dead areas on the ice.

Ales Hemsky can not stay permanently on the half boards for the Oilers to add a new dimension to their powerplay. His options there are too limited and, while he is certainly adept in that position, when he is not moving around out there he does not draw defenders to himself like he does when he is moving his feet.

In conclusion, our powerplay would have some new dimensions if we had a first unit of Hemsky, Gagner, Penner, Gilbert, and Souray. Hopefully DP is at least okay on faceoffs. That having been said, the real problem seems to lie in the rigidity of the attack, and may very well require new philosophies rather than new personnel.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpriuSMv0og

Short Term Gain, Long Term Pain

Post lockout the trend for NHL teams has been to sign players to long term contracts. The inherent risks in signing a player to a long term deal include:

• Injury
• Underperformance
• Unforeseen market downturn – where the market in question (for our purposes the NHL) sees an unexpected decline in revenues or unexpected increase in costs. It is important to note that this has to be an unexpected change or the decline should be budgeted for in all decisions.

Here we will only focus on the effects of the third issue, unforeseen market downturn. Generally speaking the costs for NHL teams outside of player contracts remain fairly constant in real dollars, or put another way are expected to rise with the rate of inflation. Player Salaries, however, do not rise at the rate of inflation like the other costs of running an NHL franchise (this is why the NHLPA insisted that as the revenues of NHL clubs increased, the salary cap (which is a percentage of league revenues) also increases from 54% of league revenues to 55% and then 56% depending on how high league revenues go). Unexpected increases in costs which are unrelated to player salaries are not a problem that will hurt NHL teams if the economy takes a nosedive (which probably just happened) because they are flexible enough to account for lower revenue streams.

Therefore the biggest risk to both the economic feasibility of the NHL and of each individual franchise lies in having player costs which are too high and impossible to get rid of. Given this, it is safer for teams, especially in times of economic recession, to sign players to short term contracts so as to reduce their amount of risk.

Since the NHL operates under a cap, and we will assume for the sake of this argument that this will not change (economists are nothing without good assumptions anyways), player salaries should not become burdensome enough to risk the stability of franchises, at least not directly, but they could very well hurt the competitiveness of teams if they have players signed to long term deals and the revenues of the league turn south and the salary cap declines in value. There are several reasons for which the NHL could see a decline in revenues over the next few years, and as soon as this coming summer when they analyze league revenues again. The two most noteworthy reasons are listed here:

General market downturn: The NHL, as it is an entertainment good, is susceptible to recessions more than essential goods are. As average income decreases the amount of dollars spent on essential goods (food, housing, healthcare, etc) will experience declines which are much less severe than those experienced by any business which produces a product which is non-essential. All sports are subjected to this effect, and all should be affected, but the NHL is in rough shape relative to the other major sports in North America. The television deals which the NBA, NFL, and MLB have are worth much more than those which the NHL currently has. Since television deals are typically revenue streams which are signed for multiple years their revenue is known for all years until the contract expires, it is a much more stable and predictable revenue stream than gate revenues. Since the NHL relies so heavily on gate revenues their revenues will be hardest hit by any economic recession.

The value of the Canadian Dollar: Don’t quote me on this (general rule: don’t quote me ever, you’ll only get me in trouble) but if I recall correctly all six of the Canadian NHL teams were in the top 10 in league revenues last year. League revenues are counted in US dollars, as are player salaries. Last year (2007 calendar year) the Canadian Dollar reached exchange rates as high as 1.036 USD. The yearly average exchange rate was roughly 0.92 USD for 2007. This was an increase over the 2006 years average (roughly 0.88 USD) and the 2005 average exchange rate of roughly 0.82 USD. Currently the Canadian dollar is worth 0.846 USD, which is the lowest since November, 2005. Just looking at the change in value relative to 2007 (the Canadian Dollar remained high until very recently when it declined sharply to its current levels so the 2007 average is fairly close to the average for the 2007/2008 NHL season) the Canadian Dollar has seen a devaluation of 9%. The Canadian government wishes to keep the exchange rate lower than it was last year to help its export industry, at least that’s what I surmised from watching the leaders’ debate, so I don’t think we can expect any drastic increases in the value of the Canadian Dollar in the near future. So if no other factors came into play the value of the Canadian dollar would mean a decline in the revenues of Canadian teams by about 10%. Six of your highest revenue franchises losing ten percent of their revenues before the puck is dropped amounts to a serious problem if you’re a team which expected the NHL cap number to stay where it is, or even increase through the next couple of years.

We have seen many players signed to long term deals and for the most part these deals haven’t been albatrosses like they would have been if the cap had not risen every year since the lockout. When it takes four years for the cap ceiling to grow from 39M to 56M there will be a considerable amount of dollars available to unrestricted free agents. If it wasn’t for this rise we would probably be talking about how difficult it was for the Rangers to shore up their defense given the signings of Gomez and Drury.

This is a situation which probably won’t get too much consideration until summer comes around, but we’re already seeing a bit of hesitation by NHL teams to sign players to the types of deals we’ve seen over the last few years. For instance, Daniel Alfredsson has still not signed an extension in Ottawa, although I can only speculate as to why that might be, I would guess that the economy and uncertainty as to what the cap will look like might play into that. I for one am very curious to see what kind of money teams throw at Marian Hossa this summer or what kind of money Gaborik signs for. Keep in mind that if the salary cap does go down the Oilers could have serious trouble bringing back Garon, Grebeshkov, and Brodziak without having to cut loose other players.

Line Dancing – ON ICE!!!

After the first game of the season I’m fairly certain (as certain as you can be after one game) that we’re going to see MacT go down to the kitchen cupboards and come back with twelve hockey cards, a jar of honey, and a blender. Whatever sticks together plays together. Well probably not that severe, but we could be looking at something drastic which affects at least a couple of the three man units.

Penner had a great game on Sunday. He looked quicker, he seems more comfortable in the interviews this year and may be in line for another cameo on the top line. I think we’ll see Penner take a few regular shifts on the top line, and maybe even some first unit PP too. It’s a good bet that MacT won’t want to take him off of the PK given how he played in game 1 so I’m guessing he will end up with a lot of special teams minutes and Cole will take some first line minutes on the first line in games where there are a lot of penalties. Remember how MacT said last year that Penner had to work on his conditioning because he wasn’t used to playing as many minutes as they wanted him to play? Well in game 1 he only played about 15 minutes and was very effective, so they might not want to give him too many minutes lest he become less effective. We’ll see how this all plays out.

We might see Cole playing on the right side with Gagner and Nilsson if he isn’t effective on the top line in the next couple of games. Of course this depends on how well the kids are producing, but if the other lines aren’t working they might get split up anyways to shake up the other lines. Obviously Cogliano would slip down onto the third line and play center between Pisani and Moreau if that happened. This would result in more guys playing in their natural position.

The current roster looks like it has a lot of malleability and can be put together in more than a few ways and still work so its fun to think about. Feel free to leave your own ideas. I’ll wait until the next game before I guess at how we change the powerplay if it isn’t working.

Game 1 Notes

Mathieu Garon was the best player on either team. He single handedly kept the Oilers in a game in which they were outplayed. On the other hand Peter Budaj was not particularly solid. Both third period goals were stoppable.

Penner bagged two, including the winner with 6 seconds left. He looks like he’s a lot quicker this year than he was last year.

Gilbert and Grebeshkov played a lot of minutes against Sakic’s line. There were a few giveaways and a decent amount of chaos when they had the puck in their own end but boy can they both move the puck well. Grebeshkov had 2 helpers and looked right at home when he filled in for Souray on the PP in the first period. I hope they move him up to the first unit to see how he looks. That way both Souray and Visnovsky can play on the right side on the PP and set up for one timers.

The fourth line didn’t do much of anything.

Ok most of the Oilers didn’t do much of anything at even strength.

Again with Penner, he looked great on the PK tonight with Pisani.

Through preseason and the first game Garon has had some trouble with right handed shooters going low blocker on him. It’s like how Jussi Jokinen would come down on a goalie that catches with his left and snap it low blocker, but reversed.

Faceoffs and time of possession were two glaring weaknesses for the Oilers. The two are closely linked statistically and the Oilers lost on both counts tonight.

The Oilers could really use a calming presence on their back end. I don’t think they have one right now, but maybe Gilbert turns into one sooner rather than later.

Just like the last few preseason games, the Oilers were badly outshot in the game. This is not a winning formula unless your goalie is the first star and the other team’s goalie is only starting because the guy hiding from Tony Granato on the bench is named Raycroft.

It was hard to see the players’ numbers on the third jerseys. Maybe it was just my TV, but something about the uniforms hurt my eyes.

Shawn Horcoff won 27% of his faceoffs. Cogliano was 1 for 7, good for a 14% rate. Pisani was twice as good at 2 for 7 and 29%, while Brodziak was 4 for 6. Pouliot was 1 for 2 and Gagner 0 for 3. Maybe the term work in progress is being optimistic. I seem to remember a while ago Moreau was one of our better faceoff guys on his strong side, and last year Penner took a few draws and didn’t fail so miserably. How often does a team go 14 for 50 in the dot and come out ahead in the game? Wow.

Ales Hemsky played less than 16 minutes. Did I miss something here?

The Defenseman Formerly Known As Garbagekov

Well this is my first attempt at writing a blog, as you may have surmised by the lack of an archive, or by the fact that while you were doing what I was doing in mid July, reading Oiler blogs, you never once came across something I’ve written. I thoroughly enjoy reading the articles I come across on this site so I thought I would make one of my own to tackle any issues I haven’t seen being discussed by other bloggers, or to throw in my two cents on whatever is current and hip. Let me know what you think in the comments section.

One of my favorite Oilers, and likely an Oiler who is considered in a much different light by most after the second half of the 07-08 season, is Denis Grebeshkov. I think he's a young defenseman just coming into his own who could blossom in the next year and solidify a top four spot with the Oilers. I also think he is a defenseman who the Oilers will have to be very careful not to lose after the upcoming season for a number of different reasons. The ones that come to mind right now are listed below:

Offer sheet

No GM will have any qualms about extending an offer sheet to an Oilers RFA given the team's recent history with regards to Vanek and Penner. The Oilers currently have about 3.8 million in cap space (including the bonus cushion, given that we are talking about a contract for next year where the bonus cushion should presumably be in play again) according to nhlnumbers.com. Roloson comes off the books, which should clear up roughly 2.7 million in cap space, and so does Erik Cole at 4 million.
If the Oilers attempt to sign Mathieu Garon to an extension it is likely they will do so before the end of this season. If re-signed he will command a considerable raise on his 1.1 million cap hit. My best guess based on last season's performance would put him in the 4M+ range, even if he takes a hometown discount. Other notable players who will be restricted free agents include Kyle Brodziak and Laddie Smid. Brodziak will certainly command a raise on his 0.5M cap hit, and it remains to be seen how far along Smid is at the end of this year so I won’t speculate on what kind of contract would be fair value for him at the end of this season. The likelihood of an offer sheet to Grebeshkov being successful at the end of next season seemingly (at this point, barring any other moves by the club) hinges on whether or not Erik Cole is in the long term future of the Oilers. If he is, then the Oilers will in all likelihood attempt to sign him well before July 1. This would leave the Oilers with very little cap space to sign Grebeshkov to a long term deal.

KHL

With the high profile signings of Jagr and Radulov by Russian teams this summer there is no doubt that the KHL is attempting to make a splash by luring away NHL players with big dollar offers. This is fairly standard operating procedure for a rival league which is attempting to compete with an established league (similar to what the WHA did by signing Bobby Hull), and the KHL certainly has keeping up the appearance of competing with the NHL for the best hockey players in the world as a goal. A young Russian defenseman coming off a promising season and establishing a name for himself in the NHL would be a prime target of KHL teams. The fact that he is Russian makes it more likely that he could be swayed to leave the NHL for the KHL, especially considering the fact that Grebeshkov is currently the only Russian player on the Oilers roster. If he has a big year, or even a year similar to the second half of last year the Oilers may not be able to match any offer extended to the young defenseman by a KHL team. For this reason the Oilers may have to look at Grebeshkov in a similar way that they would look at a defenseman who becomes an UFA at the end of the year and look to sign him well before July 1st.
The KHL may have played a part in Grebeshkov only wanting a one year deal rather than a two or three year deal. Given that his performance in the second half of the season was so much better than his performance in the first half there is certainly evidence that he is a player who could be a very solid NHLer for many years. However since he has only performed at this level for half a season the Oilers were certainly not going to offer him a long term deal based on that performance. Signing a one year deal was the safe move for the Oilers because they already have a number of long term contracts on the books, and with the younger Oilers coming into their own the team will need some flexibility to sign these players in two years. On the flipside signing a one year deal with the KHL looming gives the Grebeshkov camp considerable leverage when negotiating the next contract.

Poor performance

If Grebeshkov does not continue to improve, or at least perform as he did at the end of last season then he will certainly not be negotiating a long term deal with the Oilers. If this is the case then the team may well turn to other young defensemen such as Smid, Theo Peckham or Taylor Chorney as players in the long term future of the Oilers. If these players continue to develop, roster spots will need to be made available to them and Grebeshkov may be the resulting casualty. I don’t consider this to be a likely outcome as I personally think very highly of Grebeshkov as a defenseman and don’t anticipate him falling back to the level of performance we saw in the first half of the season.

Conclusion

Given the number of long term contracts the Oilers have on the back end and the amount of dollars tied up in these deals, combined with the lack of cap space and contract status of young Oilers two summers from now, a decision on whether or not Grebeshkov is an Oiler for any length of time will probably have to be made this season. His future is probably also tied to the futures of Garon and Cole, as well as to how moveable Sheldon Souray’s contract proves to be. And even then the threat of him taking his services to Russia casts considerable uncertainty on his long term future with the team. Unfortunately, the future of Denis Grebeshkov as an Oiler does not look promising at this moment in time, regardless of how his play develops in the upcoming season.

Well thanks for reading guys (or girls? Are there girls in the Oilersphere?) I encourage you to let me know what you think about my blog and genuinely want to know what other opinions exist on the subjects I write about.