Edmonton Oilers

Seems like a lot of ex-Oilers from the past opening up about this franchise this summer and it's nice to see. Our franchise was so bad during those years and it feels good to see some of it come to light.

Oilers talk starts at 29:26

• He had a lot going on in his personal life, and that contributed to Edmonton as a choice.
• Did not take the highest offer when he joined the Oilers.
• One of the other teams was an East coast team that had a lot of Russians and he didn't like the team culture.
• MacT, on first meeting Sheldon, criticised him in front of the whole team for not being ready for training camp. Souray had just had surgery and wasn't healthy for training camp. MacT put extra pressure on him which could have contributed to further injuries.
• Tom Renney told him to fight Iginla, and he broke his hand during the fight.
• After the surgery, he got a staph infection that was life threatening. While trying to recover, he's being accused of milking an injury.
• He says he was done being an Oiler after one season, but wanted to try his best to enter season two playing well so he could get traded.
• He had a story about Pat Quinn back stabbing him. The two had a conversation, but Quinn then had a press conference and threw him under the bus.

I get the feeling that this a "he said, she said" type of situation, but the rumours about how bad the Oilers organization was really fits well with Sheldon's version of events.

Launching on September 5th at 7:00 am on the AM dial, Sports 1440 is set to deliver a diverse range of sports commentary, insights, and entertainment to listeners throughout the Edmonton area.

• The Kevin Karius Show: 7:00 am - 11:00 am
• Fantasy Frenzy with Halley & Douglas: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
• The Lowdown with Lowetide: 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
• The Jason Gregor Show: 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm

If you're looking for AM Nasty/The Morning Show, they will return September 6 in podcast form Twitter link. The tweet says to bookmark https://edmontonsportstalk.com/.

I listened to media availability on oilersplus.com. I'll include my notes of stuff I thought was interesting. OEG will usually post the video up later on their youtube channel.

• He said that Paul Coffee helped talk him into it.
• A lot of the earlier questions were about "how do we keep Connor" and he answered in a general way, but shared a good personal story about Connor.
• He said would not have accepted a CEO job anywhere else, only for the Oilers.
• He mentioned that they're getting pretty close to signing Bouch.
• Holland was asked about Nicholson, where Kenny pointed to Tim who spoke off mic, all I could make out was that he would be shifted to "Special Advisor".

All CEOs kind of sound the same, but I already like this guy way more than Bob Nicholson.

[Mike Stelter] Hi everyone, we wanted to update you all with what’s going on in our lives. I was having back pains and with an mri and the doctors found a tumour growing on my spine. We have to travel to the US for treatment because it’s not available in Canada. (Father of Ben Stelter)

Excited to see how he does this year

Correct me if I'm wrong, but while Yamamoto (5'8) is undersized for the NHL, Bourgault (6'0) isn't exactly "small."

A bit sad it didn't work out. He never could find his stride here.

Hope this goes well or we can get it done before the date.

The return!

Another decent signing for the Oilers. Pretty consistent 25 point bottom 6 guy.

Seems like there's some noise with this Connor Brown stuff.

I don't think there will be much happening and we should probably just run things back. Maybe somehow swap Yamamoto with Brown and try to upgrade the defense one more time before/at trade deadline.

Run the rest back.

What do you guys think?

Yeah, it's a Mark Spector article, but content.

Just a shout out to the jerks at TSN who just wrecked our local sports talk community.

With any luck, our guys can regroup on another station, sooner rather than later.

Ryan McLeod and Klim Kostin are both arbitration eligible RFAs this summer, and Bouchard is also an RFA.

McLeod's QO is $813,750. Kostin's QO is $787,500. Bouchard's QO is $874,125.

For UFAs we have Bjugstad, Janmark, Ryan, and Shore. Last season their cap hits were $900k, $1.25M, $1.25M, and $850k, respectively.

Obviously there's a lot of buzz around how we handle Bouchard. We'd all like to find some magical way to lock him down long term now, but a two-to-three year bridge is the expectation.

With the cap only going up by a million (for hopefully the last time) and us having limited cap space along with limited options to create more, is there worry about having to choose between McLeod and Kostin?

Would you make offers to any of those UFAs if it were up to you? Any thoughts on depth replacements for those who we don't keep? What are your thoughts on the decisions we have to make with our pending free agents over the next months?