Équipe: 2021-22 Oilers d'Edmonton

Date de création initiale: 4 mars 2021

Publié: 5 mars 2021

Mode - plafond salarial: Basique

I'm becoming less and less enthused about paying Nuge big money for big term this summer. I like the player, but he hasn't been producing nearly enough to justify a big contract into his mid-30's IMO. So if he doesn't want to sign a deal I consider reasonable, I'd cut bait. Seriously.

I have two options for signing a LW to replace Nugent-Hopkins for $5-6M for 1 year:
Hall: give him a year to see if he can sort out his career or if all the injuries have had a long-term effect. Some of you are going to squawk about the AAV being too low, but honestly its fair considering his production this year and last.
Hoffman: a $1-2M raise based on a decent - but not amazing - season in St. Louis, this deal has potential to really pay off for the Oilers.

Adding size and physicality to the bottom-6 to make the Oilers harder to play against. There's some scoring ability there too.

Yamamoto: IMO he isn't as important to the team (especially at current production rates) as Bear was last summer - having played 1RD successfully in his rookie season, Klefbom going missing - and yet he only got $2M x 2 on his bridge deal. If that is who Holland uses as a comp, I don't see Yamamoto getting more than $1.75M on a 2-year deal and less than $3M on a 3 year deal.

By the same token, Kahun is on pace to score just 9-9-18 in 55 games (27 points per 82) while playing next to the reigning Hart trophy winner. You'd expect that from any decent AHLer - that's simply not worth more than $1M by any measure.

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