Uh-oh! Unsettling news on a much-mentioned trade target for Edmonton Oilers

Breadcrumb Trail Left Cult of Hockey Edmonton Oilers forward Connor McDavid (97) goes past Montreal Canadiens defenseman Joel Edmundson (44) at the Bell Center in Montreal on April 5, 2021. Photo by Eric Bolte / USA TODAY sports article content

Some unfortunate news has come in about the Edmonton Oilers’ oft-mentioned trade target, Montreal Canadiens’ Joel Edmundson.

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None of the veteran Montreal players are worth much because of their poor level of play, former Oilers player Georges Laraque, a close observer of the Habs, and that includes Edmundson, told Oilers Now on Friday. “I’ll tell you right now, Edmonton, don’t touch Habs players, don’t touch veterans,” Laraque said.

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As for Edmundson specifically, Edmundson said, “Joel Edmundson – and that’s not a word of a lie – his back is done. He has a herniated disc in his back. He has an ice pack all the time. He has become very slow. He’s a big disappointment. It’s not that he doesn’t want to, but he just can’t physically do it anymore. We often see him being treated on his back. He just can’t. So don’t go there. The Oilers can’t go there. I want you to win the cup. I don’t want you guys to slow down to get a Hal Gill 100x slower. You don’t want that. His health caught up with him.”

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Following Laraque’s comment Thursday afternoon, Edmundson left Thursday night’s game early with an injury.

There were fewer negative reviews of Edmundson’s trade value on Ryan Rishaug’s and Jason Strudwick’s excellent Got Yer Back podcast (which I’ll recommend, along with Oilers Now and of course The Cult of Hockey podcast, as die-hard Edmonton fans necessitate). .

Strudwick said on Thursday’s podcast that he’d like to see the Oil get a left-firing D-Man with some bite like Adam Larsson used to have here on the right. Strudwick said he didn’t see that bite from Columbus’ Vladislav Gavrikov in CBJ’s 3-2 win on Wednesday. Strudwick doubted Gavrikov was that much better than Brett Kulak.

Strudwick was more optimistic that Edmundson would deliver that bite, but he wasn’t sure he had the same momentum as Larsson. “I’m not sure if Edmundson is either. I’ve spoken to some people out there and they think he could play in your top four, he’s just having a tough time with this team. He would be my fifth defender. That would be a dream come true. I wouldn’t mind seeing Bouchard and Edmundson together. At least it packs a punch.”

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On Oilers Now, host Bob Stauffer also asked Sportnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the most connected reporter in the entire NHL, about Edmundson and brought up Laraque’s comment.

Friedman said Montreal’s defense is young and that organization might want to keep Edmundson, who has one year left on his contract, to oversee those players. “I think they would move him, but I don’t think they would do it just to do it.”

by Natural Stat Trick My Take

1. To have a credible opinion on a trading target, you must – and this is the bare minimum – have seen them play 20 or 30 times that season and carefully noted their skills and performance. I haven’t done that on any of the often mentioned trade targets for the Oilers, players like Edmundson, Vladislav Gavrikov and Luke Schenn.

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2. Stats only tell us so much, especially stats that judge an individual player based on how well their team performs on the ice. This type of analysis is extremely distressing when it comes to evaluating d-men’s defensive play.

3. Individual statistics, such as B. Points per 60, capture something useful about a player’s offensive play. I would never say that points per 60 in a single season is a perfect measure of the true talent of a D-Man’s offensive ability, but it’s far better than any other single stat we have. When it comes to oil trade goals, Edmundson has the lowest score per 60 at equal strength, just 0.3 per 60, which ranks him 198th out of 212 NHL D-men who have played more than 250 5-on-5s this year -played minutes. Schenn is in 23rd place with 1.25 to 60. I doubt Schenn is an offensive dynamo, and a lot of his points probably come from passing the puck to his most frequent partner, Quinn Hughes, and letting Hughes work his magic.

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4. Schenn also performs well on some reasonably useful defense stats, hits and blocks per 60 at consistent power. Schenn leads the leagues in hits per 60 for regular D-Men with 17.8 per 60 while Edmundson is 74th at 5.66 per 60. But when it comes to blocked shots per 60, Edmundson is ahead of Schenn, 6.1 per 60 for a 15th overall ranking for Edmundson, 4.9 on 60 for Schenn, 52nd overall.

4. Gavrikov’s rankings for points, hits and blocks per 60 are all unimpressive. For Oiler comparisons, he hits with the same low frequency as Brett Kulak, blocks shots with the same low frequency as Evan Bouchard and Philip Broberg, and scores with the same low frequency as Cody Ceci. Edmundson scores lower than Ceci, blocks far more shots than any Oilers D-Man, and hits about as many as Ceci.

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5. When it comes to defensive partnerships, none of Edmundson’s partnerships have fared well when it comes to goals for and against odds at even strength. Both he and Kaiden Guhle and he and David Savard buckled. Gavrikov has done well with Marcus Bjork for CBJ while he has buckled with Andrew Peake. Schenn and Hughes made it for Vancouver, much like Chychrun and Shayne Gostibehere did in Arizona. But again, these are numbers earned by all players on the ice, not just the two D-men, and are heavily influenced by the quality of competition and zone starts. So I put some weight on those numbers since at least two out of every five players on the ice are ranked together, but I don’t put any significant weight on them. The numbers tell a coach which defensive partnerships might be a good bet for an upcoming game, but that’s as far as I’d take it.

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6. Again, I’m not here to tell you which D-Man the Oilers should act against. I can tell you which Oilers D-men are doing well on both offense and defense, but I haven’t put in the work to evaluate trade targets. However, the stats and injury talk surrounding Edmundson are troubling. You are a red flag. Laraque isn’t one to be stubborn and can sometimes exaggerate his enthusiasm, but he has a solid knowledge of the Montreal team, so I’ll give some weight to his assessment of Edmundson’s worth.

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