Petry just amazes, night to night. He makes his mistakes from time to time, sure, but considering his NHL experience, he keeps the mistakes quite low. I love how he doesn’t quit on plays too. Best case of that was one of his games in the past month where he blew a tired at the offensive zone blue line and went down when the puck came back to him. It would have been an odd man rush, but he hung in there and managed to pull off a miracle, swatting the puck away twice and keeping it in the offensive zone, from on his ass.

Other than that, he is physical when he needs to be, and solid positionally in other moments. I also love watching him try and throw the hip checks. He’s done it a few times and hasn’t made huge contact just yet, but eventually he’ll land a good one. Even when he hasn’t contacted 100%, he’s still slowed guys down enough. It is awesome watching him track guys… cutting across the ice. I loved what I saw of him in College in that regard. He also is great at jumping in on the offense and is cool and collected in the defensive zone.

his offence was the one thing i pointed at as an unknown since he hasnt had a green light atmosphere since junior.

I think with a 5 man defensive press and green light offense it is wise for the Oilers to look at more guys who caan give you a clean 20 rather than a minute beast. 20 minutes of that kind of hockey is equal to 30 of trap, lock, sit and wait… imho.

In summary I repeat what i said the day of the trade; we traded a player who seems to still be learning, for one with almost the exact same contract and age who is already polished. You take and factor in that this team doesnt have alot of solid d-men, and a young offensive core that will make mistakes… and what this move should tell you is that the Oilers brass want to actually not finish in 30th next year. Aquiring NS is aquiring a finished project that you know what you can get out of. The Wild got a player stilll learning and trying to find consistency–much like the rest of the oilers team.

as an additional comment to this; petry has been twice the player in gilberts absence than he was when gilbert was here. since the trade i would say with certainty petry (still learning)>gilbert (still learning). when you add that in to the equation…there is no doubt the oilers made the right move.
Addition by subtraction doesnt have to only be in the instance where a person is having a negative effect in the dressing room or on the ice in an obvious fashion. it can also be just opening a position so that other players are not stunted. This was my main concern with hemskys contract. I still think we will be drafting a russian centre with our first pick and we will hopefully trade our 2013 first in a package for another stable nhl d-man who is already polished like NS. then we can start moving up the nhl standings.

BTW i have been paying close attention to Klefbom this year and it wouldnt surprise me if he pushes someone out of a job at camp next year. He is very VERY solid and in just a year has made drastic improvements which will cross over to the nhl. I think Musil is over there alot to pass on feedback the oilers brass have for him. I am very excited for him to land in etown.

But yah, I kind of wondered if they could have moved Whitney instead. I like having on to right-handed D’s too.

I’ve made it no secret though that I wouldn’t mind seeing the Oilers move Whitney in the off-season. But I would much rather see him return to full health and play with us, if that’s at all possible.

But that said too, I think a lot of people figure we could have moved someone else to get Schultz (and still had Gilbert on line 2, for instance). But I’m not so sure about that anyways, since Minny seemed really attached to Schultz.