Tragic Choice: Edmonton Oilers fans should prepare for a new kind of pain

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We, the Faithful, the long-time and life-long fans of the Edmonton Oilers, have known various kinds of pain since the team was born in 1972, right?

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Here is a list of the most memorable agonizing moments: the 1986 loss to the Flames; the Gretzky sale; the Messier sale; the Doug Weight and Curtis Jospeh trades; the 2006 loss to the Hurricanes; the Pronger trade; the Taylor Hall trade; the Decade of Darkness-plus. 

Most of these pains come from either a hard playoff defeat or the loss of a top player for financial reasons.

Now, though, comes a new kind of pain. It’s not so great as the previous pains. It’s also got a major silver lining.

Indeed, this particular form of agony comes out of the team’s success. It’s the kind of pain other top NHL teams have faced in the cap era, most notably the Chicago Blackhawks.

It comes with winning in this era and not being able to afford to keep together all the pieces of the winning team due to the NHL’s hard salary cap and share-the-wealth rules related to competitive balance.

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The Oilers are now pressed up against the cap and likely face losing out on a top player because they simply can’t stay under the cap without moving out a decent size contract.

It’s also possible the Oilers will lose a top prospect d-men, Dmitri Samorukov, on waivers this year because there might not be room for him in Edmonton, his Entry Level Contracts is up, and other teams will able to select him if he’s put on waivers in order to be farmed out to Bakersfield.

On the first point, the cap issue, Oilers GM Ken Holland will do all he can to alleviate such pain. He’s in no rush to move out a good young winger like Jesse Puljujarvi or Warren Foegele, players who can help this team win this season during Edmonton’s Stanley Cup window.

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On the Lowetide and Jamieson show, Holland noted he might run with fewer than 23 players on the NHL roster this year to help deal with the hard cap. “That’s a possibility,” Holland said, noting the cap is only going up slowly, just $1 million a year. “We will probably have to run it on 21 or 22 players.”

Players at the bottom end of the roster tend to cost $750,000 to $1.0 million each, so Holland could maybe save $1.5 to $2.0 million this year against the cap in this manner, if he strictly adhered to a 21 man roster.

But it could be a trade will have to be made, with a Foegele, a Puljujarvi or a Tyson Barrie traded out of town, and with the Oilers getting little in return given how many teams are looking to move out money and how few teams have the cap space to take on new salary, even if they’re inclined to do so.

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As I see it, Arizona, Buffalo, Anaheim, Chicago, Detroit, Winnipeg, Ottawa and maybe Montreal (depending on what happens with Carey Price) might be willing to take on salary. But unless there’s a bidding war from these teams for an Oilers forward, it’s hard to imagine Edmonton would get much for a winger like Puljujarvi, even as he played well here in a Top 6 role most of last season.

As for Foegele, due to his $2.75 million contract for two more years and his just OK production on the attack, Edmonton would likely have to add a sweetener to. move him.

Oilers fans, it seems, have their heads around the idea of a poor return for the two wingers .

In a Cult of Hockey pol, most respondents, 43 per cent, think the Oilers will get as much as a second round pick for Puljujarvi, with 12 per cent holding out hope for a first round pick. I’m in the camp with 37 per cent of fans that think he’ll bring in a third-to-fifth round pick. Eight per cent of respondents felt Puljujarvi had negative value now, meaning Edmonton would have to sweeten the deal to move him.

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As for Foegle, 41 per cent of fans think Edmonton will get a lower round draft pick for him, but the majority believe the team will have to add some sort of sweetener to make the trade. I think a fourth or fifth rounder is the likely price to move him.

Again, maybe Holland can pull out some kind of salary cap wizardry where he can avoid trading off one of these promising and useful players, but I’m gearing myself up for his tragic choice (in hockey terms), his unhappy pick of which good player has got to go with little coming back in return.

Of course, I’ll take a successful Edmonton Oilers over the opposite. In fact, it’s been years since I’ve been this optimistic about the Oilers heading into a season. Maybe the summers of 2006 and 2017 come close.

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This Oilers roster is stacked high with superstar talent and excellent supporting talent. In the cap era, it costs plenty to assemble and maintain that kind of roster, and the pain comes when you can’t hold on to every single good player, but I suspect it will be far less bitter pain than what we Oilers fans experienced previously, say in the summers of 1988 or 2006.

If a trade is made, we’ll complain, we’ll bitch, we’ll blast Holland for not doing better, but it’s nonetheless hard not to look forward to this coming season without some kind of an inner smile.

P.S. I had originally reported that prospect d-men Vincent Desharnais and Markus Niemelainen might be lost on waivers this fall, but that is incorrect. Both players can be sent to Bakersfield without the threat of another NHL team grabbing them.

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