- Pass it to Bullis via twitter: The Toronto Marlies played the Abbotsford Heat last night, drawing Vancouver Canucks scouts and management. Strombone1 via twitter: Strombone (Roberto Luongo?) responded with “That’s weird?” Pass it to Bullis via twitter: At the Marlies-Heat game: Dave Nonis, Brian Burke, Laurence Gilman, Stan Smyl.
- Jonathan Willis of Oilers Nation: A couple days ago Bob Stauffer said on “Oilers Now” that he expects the Oilers to make a “wow factor move” on 630 CHED:
Stauffer: “I believe the Edmonton Oilers will make a move that makes people say ‘wow’ upon the CBA being completed, between then and the start of the season.”
Reid Wilkins: “This is a player personnel move?”
Stauffer: “Yeah. Believe that’s going to occur.”
And then a little later on, Stauffer added this:
“I believe there will be a wow factor move coming. And it’ll make for some entertaining discussion, let’s just say that.”
Willis then noted that the Oilers have some depth at wing, that could return the names Magnus Paajarvi and Ales Hemsky to the rumor mill. Sam Gagner is another name that may come up, though it would likely require them to bring back another center. Along the blueline is the most obvious need for the Oilers. They have Devan Dubnyk and Nikolai Khabibulin in net, which could be upgraded.
- David Staples of the Edmonton Journal: Oilers Kevin Lowe spoke with Bob Stauffer yesterday, and talked about the “wow factor move” that Stauffer suggested a couple days before. With many young assets, could a trade (excluding Jordan Eberle, Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Nail Yakupov) speed up the process of turning around the Oilers:
“You’re going into a game with lots of trump cards,” Lowe said. “That’s the only way you can make deals is if you have assets that are attractive to other teams. When you have assets then you can make deals.
“So, absolutely, we’re at some point, whenever that is, we’re probably not too far down the road, we’re going to have to make some touch choices and maybe move some players, or a player, draft picks, to get a piece or two that finishes off the formation of what you feel is a championship team. I mean, we need to get to the playoffs first (laughed) so you can’t put the cart ahead of the horse, but no question. I don’t talk to managers on a regular basis any more, that’s Steve Tambellini’s job, but I do know from my past experiences that we won’t have a tough job selling anybody on anybody that we have in the event we’re interested in a player on another team.”
Lowe’s comments on the biggest question marks for the Oilers:
“There’s a number of them. Are we strong enough defence? Goaltending is a question mark, and I say that in all respect to Devan Dubnyk and Khabi (Nikolai Khabibulin). Khabi has been injured and he’s approaching 40. He’s given us stretches of strong goaltending but his health is one thing.”