Trade no easy fix for Oilers
Rebuild itself needs rebuilding
The fact there is no easy or quick fix for the Edmonton Oilers was amply illustrated Wednesday when GM Craig MacTavish swapped goaltender Devan Dubnyk to Nashville for sandpapery forward Matt Hendricks, then sent a third-round pick to the Los Angeles Kings for netminder Ben Scrivens.
While Scrivens, 27, a Spruce Grove native, will become the fifth man to play goal for the Oilers this season, reliable goaltending is just one of a cluster of concerns for the talented but incomplete team that needs top-end defencemen and more size and grit up front, just for starters.
The challenge for MacTavish is not so much carrying on the work begun by former GM Steve Tambellini, as actually rebuilding the rebuild, depressing as that might sound. That starts with two reliable NHL goaltenders, revamping the defence around prospects Darnell Nurse and Oscar Klefbom, adding more grit and gristle to the forward lines, and much else.
Scrivens’ career numbers — an 18-19-6 won-lost record; a 2.54 goals-against average; a .917 save percentage — suggest he is an upgrade on Dubnyk.
Like Dubnyk, Scrivens becomes an unrestricted free agent at season’s end, so any upgrade could well be temporary.
Few things are permanent in pro sports, certainly not the tenure of NHL goaltenders. So far this season, Dubnyk, Jason LaBarbera, Richard Bachman, Ilya Bryzgalov and soon Scrivens all will have had a shot at backstopping the Oilers to victory.
Scrivens was dealt from the Toronto Maple Leafs to Los Angeles in the off-season for goalie Jonathan Bernier. But the emergence of Martin Jones, the ex-Calgary Hit men goalie, provided unexpected depth for the Kings, enabling them to ship Scrivens to Edmonton for the draft pick.
It’s possible neither Scrivens nor incumbent Bryzgalov, also an impending UFA, will be around next season for the Oilers, whose goalie of the future seems to be Laurent Brossoit. The former Edmonton Oil Kings star is posting shutout after shutout down there in the ECHL with the Bakersfield Condors, building his game, still two or three years away from being a regular NHLer.
Depending upon how he performs for the rest of this season, the Oilers may try to sign Scrivens, who played for Edmonton head coach Dallas Eakins when he was with the Toronto Marlies of the American Hockey League, and pair him with another goalie yet to be acquired.
So, the goalie turnstile will take another twirl or two, perhaps in the direction of James Reimer, another Toronto goalie with an Eakins connection who has been supplanted by Bernier with the Maple Leafs.
You have to think Dubnyk is smiling at the thought of playing behind a defence led by Shea Weber and rookie phenom Seth Jones, not to mention the defensively responsible play instilled by Predators head coach Barry Trotz. At 27, his future with the Oilers clouded all season, Dubnyk probably is better served moving to another organization, getting the proverbial fresh start.
“This organization gave me the best opportunity of a lifetime in the NHL and I’m very grateful for that, ”Dubnyk told reporters in St. Paul, Minn., as he departed the team that drafted him 14th overall in the 2004 NHL Draft.
Whoever tends goal for the Oilers the rest of this and next season, on the other hand, well, he will undoubtedly struggle behind the club’s sketchy defensive-zone coverage until the club adds an elite defenceman or two, not to mention some more defensive-minded forwards.
For now, and the next three seasons, given his contract ($1.85 million), the 32-yearold Hendricks will be expected to provide the sort of meat MacTavish spoke about adding to his corps of slight, highly skilled forwards when he was named GM last April.
Hendricks is a six-foot, 211-pound package who can win faceoffs, play with an edge, kill penalties and fight, if necessary. He is not a scorer; he’s a support player.
MacTavish, it must be said, has done well in supplying his team with players keen to do the heavy lifting, from multi-tasking Boyd Gordon to punch-above-his-weight defenceman and team captain Andrew Ference, to useful tough guy Luke Gazdic.
Whether Hendricks fits that mould or will prove a disappointment, as the likes of Eric Belanger, Ben Eager, Jared Smithson and Andy Sutton were in the past couple of years, remains to be seen.
But Scrivens (if the Oilers sign him) and Hendricks are just two pieces in a far more extensive renovation for the Oilers, who remain stapled to the basement floor in the Western Conference with just 15 victories and 35 points in 49 games of another challenging season.
These additions, while useful, aren’t likely to change that in the short term.