Comments on: Rangers let Zherdev walk…

By: OilerzCounty83

OilerzCounty83 — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 05:50:40 +0000

These russian boys are really pushing buttons in the NHL lol, Zherdev is a good a player
he has the potential to score, if Edmonton would have signed him he would of been 2nd in points on our Oilers roster with 58 points ? But it looks like we let Zherdev walk free. Id give him 4 mill for 2 years that all Zherdev is worth . Thats giving him 2 mil per year .. I also hear Toronto shut the doors to Zherdev where is he likely to land the KHL … back home in Russia enless a team like Phoenix or Tampa try and lure him which i dont really see him agreeing too .

With the Oilers where would Zherdev stand, definnialy with Hemsky and Horcoff , some PP time on the 1st or 2nd core of PP`s, he would be intresting mix with Patrick O Sulivan also
to bad that will just be a fantasy as of now we are not taking Zherdev with him and Renney past i dont think so hearing he is lazy and a on and off player that remindes me that MaCtasvish is still in the house blahhh

By: Racki

Racki — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:36:47 +0000

No need to clarify, I figured you were likely on board with the idea of freeing up salary by stuffing some down in the minors.

And one thing to note, if we would have landed Heatley, we would have had to free up cash somehow to finish this roster (as we’d need to have two more guys in the line up, but would only have about $1M in salary left). So somewhere, Tambellini must’ve had a plan to free up salary in some way, you’d think. Now of course, having a star like Heatley obviously makes us just THAT much better and that much more likely to be a solid team, but still.. I just think that it looked like “oh shit, we didn’t get Heatley… well why bother then, let’s just sulk and cry about it for a while in the corner”.

Effin’ fix the other problems. They’ll probably do this team a greater benefit anyways.

By: Hockey Noob

Hockey Noob — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:23:53 +0000

Hey Racki,

Yeah, I think that I wasn’t entirely clear on my last comment. I realize that we’re tight against the cap right now. However, if we were to go after a Malhotra or similar–assuming that even Malhotra could be signed at around $2 million cap hit, then the salary cap issues that this would create could be managed. I agree about your thoughts regarding Nilsson as the potential solution to the cap issues created by signing a checker/faceoff/pker.

Waiving Nilsson to send him to the AHL or hope that somebody picks him up would free up $2million in cap space right there. I guess if he made it down to the AHL, then the only issue would be salary–not salary cap as I meant earlier.

Yeah, it doesn’t sound like waiving anyone is on Tambi’s radar right now, but we’ll have to see, lol.

By: Racki

Racki — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 04:53:55 +0000

Hey Noob, I agree with Willis. The too many bodies/contracts issue isn’t even an issue right now. I did a count earlier in the off-season (not that long ago), and we still had space. But no, we have no space on the cap though. We have maybe a million, once Smid is re-signed. If anyone, we could probably get Betts, for cheap. But Betts is a fairly uni-dimensional player. I’ve been thinking about things lately, and we have a few guys in the 40s. Really, I’d like to see an improvement there, but if that doesn’t happen, the best thing they can do is forget about Cogliano on the dot (unless he did some sort of ironman faceoff training in the off-season that we don’t know about).

I also have been preaching the need to cut Nilsson loose, which sounds like he is in agreement with, as is Lowetide. Really Nilsson’s skills are duplicated by a few other players, and at 2M, he’s fodder for a waiver. That’s enough to sign a checker/faceoff/pker right there. Hellooooo Malhotra. God forbid we’d actually waive anyone though, right?

By: Hockey Noob

Hockey Noob — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 02:04:06 +0000

Hey Racki,

Yeah, the goal tending issue certainly was left until the last minute.

Some of the holes in our current roster have been around for the past two or three seasons without getting addressed. I mean, yeah we lost our 2nd best faceoff man, but it’s not like this area wasn’t already a problem even with Brodziak. I believe we were 25th in the league in terms of faceoff % last season.

Given that many of our team’s problems last season such as PK, PP, and faceoff %–won’t likely be to amenable to a dramatic improvement based on a coaching change alone, one might wonder why we don’t at least acquire at least a PK/Faceoff man?

I think that Jonathan Willis on Copper & Blue, made a fairly compelling argument recently that not signing a UFA has little to do with the too many bodies/contracts argument and more to do with salary concerns (not salary cap).