If Evander Kane misses the rest of the regular season — as seems increasingly likely given his recent knee surgery and the complexity of coming back from his initial abdominal surgery — the Edmonton Oilers will be in the hunt for a rugged forward or two.
The team can’t completely count on Kane being ready for the playoffs, so Edmonton will need to replace some of forechecking ferocity he brings, as well as bolster the speed and hitting impact of the fourth line.
In other words, they’ll need to find one or two more players who play the game with the same hard-hitting aspect and handy amount of skill as newcomer Vasili Podkolzin.
The Oilers will be hard-pressed to find a player as good as Podkolzin, who has been the most surprising upbeat story of Edmonton’s season to date, as he’s earned his way up from the fourth line to the third to patrolling the wing on the same line as leading Hart Trophy candidate Leon Draisaitl.
The Draisaitl line of Drai, Pod and Viktor Arvidsson has been Edmonton’s best line for the past handful of games.
But Edmonton is the least hitting team in the NHL. This doesn’t hold them back in the regular season. In fact, it’s likely a smart strategy to lay off the hitting for an older team that played until the end of June last year and hopes to do so again this year. But in the war-on-ice of the playoffs, the Oilers will at times need at times to fight fire with fire, and to also use hitting to disrupt the opposition if they take an early lead. There’s nothing like a nasty and withering forecheck to force an opposing team into a goal-causing mistake.
The good news? There’s no shortage of candidates to play this role.
I’ve come up with a back-of-the-envelope list of potential power forward acquisitions, ranking all regular NHL forwards on their points scored in 5-on-5 play combined with their hits at 5-on-5.
I’m using points as a crude proxy for play-making ability and hits as a crude proxy for physical play. At the same time, I’m only listing players here who are veterans on teams that might not make the playoffs.
There are some interesting names. Who knows which of these players will be offered up at the trade deadline, but many of them will have more value to the Oilers than they do to their existing team.
What most interests me is that there’s a good field of prospects to dig into here, not just one or two or three names that fit Edmonton’s need, as you’ll see when you dig into the tiny market of Top 4 right shot d-man possibilities. The Oilers should find something of a buyer’s market at forward.
The other thing of note? Just how high Podkolzin ranks when you combine points and hits per 60. He’s 120th in points scoring for regular forwards at even strength and 66th in hitting. Combined he ranks 20th overall in the NHL.
Not bad at all.
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