Kr55 wrote on Tue, 13 August 2024 10:27

Adam wrote on Tue, 13 August 2024 10:23 Kr55 wrote on Tue, 13 August 2024 10:07 Jay wrote on Tue, 13 August 2024 09:50 12 minutes ago on tsn.. Oilers winger Kane unlikely to be ready for camp. Interesting timing lol Ryan Rishaug @TSNRyanRishaug My sense on Kane is surgery is the most likely course of action. Process is still underway to determine exactly what needs to be done, as there were several significant issues he was dealing with. He is not likely to be ready for training camp, and it could be several months into the season before he’s available. "several months into the season". Beautiful :) Still though, need a real D upgrade pls. Don't waste Kane's LTIR just to keep Broberg and Holloway and the rest of the current D group Good thread from @NHL_Sid on twitter about this. With aging and flawed defence, can you afford to lose a 23-year old? There's no one else under 25 other than Bouchard. Nurse is 29 and the only one under 30. But at the same time, Broberg is LHD ideally and we have big money tied up in Nurse and Ekholm on the left for years to come. This would be an easier choice if Broberg shot right where it's an absolute wasteland after Bouchard. That Kesselring trade sure looks stupid right now. Thanks a lot, Ken Holland. We need a trade, badly. I get the youth argument, but I personally don't think Broberg is worth anywhere near that offer sheet. A little 1.101 PDO stint in the playoffs coming in full of energy getting to play the underdog doesn't really change much for me. I never felt he processed the game well enough to achieve what Holland thought he was drafting. Him with that contract would be like a mini-Nurse IMO, and it would stop us from being able to actually fix the D. If he didn't know a lucrative offer sheet was coming, he may have asked for a trade anyways too. Us playing him out of total desperation can't have made him feel that much more loyalty to the org, plus he knows he could be set up to fail as Nurse's babysitter. At least this way he would be paid very well to struggle here if we do match :)

It's truly a worst case scenario. Because the Oilers have played him so little at the NHL level, the sample size that we are making a decision based on is pretty small. He has a lot of the tools, and he's definitely shown flashes but I agree, he's not been a top-four NHL guy in very many games, and he better be if you're paying that much.

When you layer in the fact that if he's playing his proper side, then you have either a $4.5MM or $9.25MM guy playing on the third pairing, it's really problematic.

I do really wonder how the Oilers get two upgrades on the Right side in the next few months. Broberg on his off-wing is probably better than Ceci on the second pair, and so the whole gets bigger with him gone. Is there any options? The guys available in UFA are pretty much all flawed players - mostly high offence, weak defence guys (Barrie, DeAngelo, Klingberg, Addison). You need a trade, but there aren't a lot of great 2nd pair guys traded in late August historically...

"Thinking that a bad team's best players are the reason the team is bad is the "Tambellini re-signing Lennart Petrell" of sports opinions." @Woodguy55
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