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Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek on 32 Thoughts: The Podcast – Who is Taking Tolvanen – on Edmonton Oilers forward Jesse Puljujarvi.
Marek: “You talked about this Elliotte on Saturday in our allotted time in the second intermission. We have a little more time here. It was a tough week for Jesse Puljujarvi. Tough to read all those comments. We’ve all seen athletes get down on themselves and some athletes are their own worst critics.
Cleary, Puljujarvi is one of those. For those that didn’t see Saturday. Run down what the Oilers might be looking at here with Puljujarvi.”
Friedman: “There’s definitely a feeling here that the Oilers and Puljujarvi’s representatives, his agents they talked about if it didn’t work out this year, Puljujarvi would get moved. There was never anything in writing about these things, but it was clearly some sort of gentleman’s agreement and I just think that we’re at that point.
Now, here’s the issue. I think there’s two. Number one is, Edmonton is short-handed. Now, guys are starting to come back. Foegele close. MacLeod, a couple weeks away. But Edmonton doesn’t really have a salary cap problem until Evander Kane is healthy. Unless they make another move.
So right now there is the issues where Edmonton is looking at it and saying, ‘you know what, we need bodies and we’re not going this right now while we need bodies.’
I also think Jeff that the market is really low for Puljujarvi right now. He’s a $3 million player who’s got one goal and I just think there’s not a lot of teams that can fit the salary, and part of the problem is, there’s always the debate about, you don’t want to trade a guy for nothing, I think the problem right now is the production is where it is and it makes it harder to trade him for something.
So Edmonton, as I mentioned on Saturday night, I had some teams tell me that they noticed a real difference, he seems to be a little more of a confident player when he’s not playing with one of the big two. Like he tries to have the puck a little bit more. He’s not always trying to force it to someone else. I think Edmonton is going to try and build him up a little bit that way.
But I do think Jeff, this will be his final season in Edmonton. Whether they trade him or put him on waivers or he stays the whole year and they don’t have give him a qualifying offer next year and maybe someone signs him for a bit less next season. One of those things is going to happen.
I just think right now, the combination of the market is soft and they need players. They just feel they aren’t going to do this right now.
Again, I’m not here to make light of what he’s going through, cause obviously, he’s going through a crisis of confidence which is no small thing. But I think the Oilers just look at it like, we need the player right now and we’ll see how this develops somewhere in the future.”
Marek: “To try to defend Puljujarvi here, at least a little bit. Defensively, he’s still a really good player. That’s still solid. I know his shooting percentage he’s getting crushed on. His linemates shooting percentage he’s getting crushed on as well. To me it kind of feels, I’m in complete agreement with you on this one. And also it feels to me like, whoever they, if they can, move him to at trade deadline. That’s going to essentially be a test drive for a contract at a reduced rate next season. That’s kind of what this feels like.
One thing I think we need to throw on the equation here as well. You mention the returning bodies and no cap crunch until Evander Kane comes back, Mattias Janmark and Klim Kostin have played really well since they’ve been up. Like they’ve been good. So that’s another knot around this story gets a little bit tighter.”
