In any best-on-best professional hockey tournament in 2024, having both Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby is a must. It is an opportunity any hockey fan should be excited about.
Recommended Videos
But this week’s announcement of the Four Nations Cup rosters left some Oilers fans leaving less than satisfied.
That and more in this edition of…
9 Things
9. The Oilers have now won five of their last six. They are tied with the Canucks in points (Vancouver has a couple games in hand) in the Pacific and sit in the first Wild Card position in the West. Yeah, the start was bad. But this is now the team I expected to be watching. Not perfect. But a playoff team and contender.
8. I had to laugh at some of the folks clutching their pearls over Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway being booed in Edmonton Saturday night. Come on, guys. It’s sports. Fans are allowed to be tribalistic and hoot at the two guys who decided not to be Oilers anymore. I still hope those guys have good careers, as I imagine most of the people doing the boo-ing do as well.
7. On the one hand, it is such a bonus to have five goals from the Oilers fourth line right winger. I appreciate that Corey Perry can still contribute. He still has hands. But that line with Derek Ryan and Connor Brown was absolutely crushed 5v5 against a St. Louis team that is not that fast. You cannot have Perry and Ryan on the same line on a regular basis.
6. As fun as the Four Nations Cup will surely be, the National Hockey League cannot pretend that this is anything approaching the Olympics. Any NHL-associated tournament that does not include the likes of Leon Draisaitl, David Pastrnak, Alexander Ovechkin, and other greats cannot claim to be a genuine “best-n-best.” More on that in a minute…
5. The Oilers engineered a minor league trade this week, sending veteran AHL D-man Noel Hoefenmayer to Montreal in exchange for Jacob Perreault. Perreault is a former First Round pick by Anaheim. He possesses something the Oilers’ system is not flush with: Offensive skill. Perreault has great hands and a great shot. Will this change of scenery help turn him into an NHL player?
4. A little karma that on Hockey Night in Canada Saturday Stuart Skinner (left off the Team Canada roster) beat Jordan Binnington (ho some project to be Canada’s starter). Skinner has been especially good the last half-dozen games. His save percentage over that stretch is over .920 for a club that no one thinks is a whiz-bang defensive unit. Skinner can be inconsistent. But ever since he became the Oilers starting netminder through good times and bad Stuart Skinner has outperformed his contract.
3. Some fresh information on the status of Evan Bouchard’s next contract arrived earlier this week, on Bb Stauffer’s Oilers Now radio program. Edmonton CEO Jeff Jackson told Stauffer “We gotta get something done with Bouch at some point. Obviously, I have a long relationship with Dave Gagner, his agent. I have been talking with Dave. There’s always an ongoing thing. You don’t just go OK; this is the day we are going to negotiate.” We will get to Bouchard’s Team Canada status in a second…
2. Speaking of Oilers Now, critical Fall radio ratings from NUMERIS were released this past week. The Oilers Now radio program is now in its third time slot in as many years, not generally a recipe for consistent success. But despite all that shuffling, Bob still managed to attract a healthy total daily audience of 25,937 (R4/24, FCDC A2+, M-F 4P-6P). The show was higher back in the Spring. But it is not unusual for sports properties to see their audiences swell as the playoffs approach and unfold.
1.Only one Edmonton Oilers player will (for now, at least) suit up for Team Canada at the Four Nations Cup: Connor McDavid. At the outset of the season there could have been as many as six players from Edmonton on that roster. Yes, a couple of those might have been relative longshots. But all six would have been legitimately in the running. From a team that just went to Game Seven of the Cup Finals that is not unrealistic. So, that McDavid is the only Oilers one seems to be more than a little short-sighted. And while I of course hope for nothing but success for Team Canada and any of the selections made, management may end up being sorry they picked the club exactly the way they did and why.
And let me just add this before I go on: If the Oilers, quite frankly, had just played better out of the gate there probably would have been two or three Oilers on that squad. I d not mean to be disingenuous. Some of this is absolutely on them. For example, Zach Hyman would have made Team Canada better. Coming off a fifty-goal season (seventy+ if you include post-season), Hyman is also a dependable two-way player who is money on the Power Play, has chemistry with McDavid, and only does not penalty kill these days in Edmonton is because his TOI would be too high. His slow start almost certainly cost him. Recency bias on the part of the selection committee? Absolutely.
I think either Ryan Nugent-Hopkins or Darnell Nurse on the back end would have been solid editions. But like Hyman, Nugent-Hopkins started terribly slow. He is an effective penalty killer but again…the Oilers PK started slow. Most of The Nuge’s production comes on the PP. But I do not know if he would even be on Canada’s second unit. Nurse has actually been more like his old self thus far. His size, speed and grit would have been a welcome addition on the D-corps. But to be entirely fair, they were dark horse picks.
In net, however, Sam Montembeau’s numbers (2.89 GAA, .905 SV%) are only marginally better than Stuart Skinner’s (2.92, .892). And I would submit that Montembeau has not won anything. Skinner, on the other hand, has been to a Cup Final and has thirty-five Stanley Cup Playoff games under his belt. I am happy for Sam Montembeau. I do not want to denigrate the honor bestowed upon him. But that particular decision smells like politics.
Finally, we come to Evan Bouchard. An elite offensive guy, Bouchard’s spectacular playoff showing should have put him over the top. I guess how much PP time he would get on the same club as Cale Makar is a legit factor. But including regular and post season last year, Evan was 24-90-114 in 106 GP! if we go back in history, what if similar criticisms had kept Paul Coffey off Team Canada?
Again, I am a Team Canada fan. I wish them the best and always will. But just one player from a team that went to the Stanley Cup Finals just a few months previous seems short-sighted.
Will the hotter hands you pick now still be the hot hands a couple months from now?
Maybe just picking the best players available is the better strategy.
Newly on Bluesky @kurtleavins.bsky.social. On Twitter @KurtLeavins, Threads @kleavins, Instagram at LeavinsOnHockey, and even on Mastodon at [email protected]. This article is not AI generated.
Recently, at The Cult…
STAPLES: A nightmare-ish return to Edmonton for Philip Broberg as the Oilers beat the Blues
McCURDY: Oilers acquire first-round pick talent in quiet AHL transaction
LEAVINS: Oilers big guns on-target as Edmonton shoots down Columbus
Don’t miss the news you need to know — add EdmontonJournal.com and EdmontonSun.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.