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By all accounts, yesterday’s Darryl Katz press conference went well. That said, having seen his hair and knowing his fealty to the Boys on the Bus, I’m disappointed that he didn’t open with “Well, welcome to the 1980’s!”

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I think I’m missing something on the concern about giving Jaromir Jagr a two year deal to come to Edmonton. As I understand it, the worry is that he’ll retire after year one. As he’s 36 years old, if he retires, his salary would stay on the cap. What baffles me is why the Oilers wouldn’t just trade him in that situation. The team acquiring him would be under no obligation to actually pay him anything - they’d just get some help in reaching the salary floor. Toss in a third round pick and you’re set.

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I’m going to revisit the Staples series once the excitement from the past few days dies down but there are a couple of quotes I can’t resist throwing up now.

“He [Pronger] never made a statement or issued anything other than ‘for my family and myself, I want to live somewhere else,’ ” LaForge says. “It never got any finality to it, no logic to it, so the bloggers and the phone-in radio shows and the fringe players in the printed press across Canada just kept making it up and making it up and making it up.”

I actually thought that the bloggers were relatively decent about the whole thing - everyone who said that he should have just got a divorce raise your hand - but I’m wondering if “bloggers and the phone-in radio shows and the fringe players in the printed press” is code for “the media we don’t control.” The guys that they do have brag about knowing the real story but explain that they can’t share it with us or they’d lose access, which would prevent them from learning other things that they can’t share with us. In any event, I searched the usual suspects for references to the rumours and didn’t find anything too bad.

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Looking at the Rangers roster with the signings of Michal Roszival and Wade Redden. If they went minimum wage for their fourth line and two press box forwards, their seventh defenceman and backup goalie, they’d have $8.6MM for Hossa. I can’t see how that gets it done unless he really wants to be there; the Rangers would end up being very shallow up front and I don’t really see who they can move to fix things. If TSN is to be believed, that leaves the Oilers, Canadiens and Penguins. Montreal would be risking the creation of a cap nightmare long-term or the loss of a bunch of guys already on their roster, given the presence of Carey Price, Tomas Plekanec and Mike Komisarek and the Penguins are already in a position where they can’t do it.

If TSN is right about who’s in it, I’d think that the Oilers are better positioned than anyone, provided that they can find somewhere to get rid of the excess salary. Maybe this was Kevin Lowe’s master plan - let Bob Gainey bog himself down with salaries for guys who earn their money and it would hurt the team to lose; the Oilers will go with a bunch of high priced guys who can be moved without a second thought.

Chicago suddenly looks very legitimate. They scored 234 goals last year and allowed 231. Their team save percentage last year was .902, good for 22nd in the NHL. Cristobal Huet has a post-lockout save percentage of .921. Subbing him in for could be worth as much as three or four wins for the Blackhawks, who missed the playoffs by three points and have a ton of young talent that’s moving in the right direction. I haven’t considered the impact of Brian Campbell in any detail but they’re heading in the right direction.

A request to the Team 1260 - as soon as a guy phones in and asks about what kind of stats Lubomir Visnovsky puts up, just cut him off. You get the guys before that mocking the internet nerds and then you’ve got people who don’t know how to use Google phoning in to ask questions that are easily answered through the magic of the internets.

As for the guy after that…wow - you’d almost think that the money Mats Sundin might get from the Canucks is coming out of his pocket.

A quick look at the Oilers salary chart:

(Those are notional numbers for Pouliot, Stortini and Reasoner.)

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I have no idea whether this is true or not - Mirtle is citing Bruce Garrioch - but this would be a fascinating acquisition. The ideas of replacement level have been kicked around a ton on this site and the idea that teams with specific abject weaknesses find it easier to improve than those with a sort of low level mediocrity. The Canucks have been putrid offensively for two years now. Adding Mats Sundin would give them a real jolt. I haven’t looked at the numbers to see what else it would do but I like the idea of paying more in the short term too. This Gillis is an interesting fellow.

Old enemy Erik Cole comes to town in the deal that was seemingly Dopita-like in terms of how everyone knew that it was going to happen. Whenever the Oilers acquire anyone of any significance, I like to look back through the archives to see what I’ve said about him in the past. I believe this to be a useful practice mostly because my review after the Lupul trade confirmed that my previous impression was that a) he was gutless, b) his scoring rates sucked and c) it looked like he was riding the coattails of his betters. Here’s what I’ve got on Cole:

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Well, this sucks. Raffi Torres is a useful hockey player. Gilbert Brule isn’t and has done so little in his time in the NHL that one wonders if he ever will be. I’d post his numbers but there’s not much point…just a bloody string of zeroes.

Oh what the hell:

-21 and -4 in 2006-07 and 2007-08 respectively. The coaches kept him away from everyone in 2007-08. They did the same thing in 2006-07.

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Methinks KLo is targetting playoff experience this year and The Stanley in 2010, while the kids are still cheap.

It’s just so bat**** crazy that it might work.

-A generally insightful Oilers fan comments on the trade

There’s a fine thread over at Lowetide’s which is probably best described as barely contained glee. There’s also a great post over at Battle of California from Rudy Kelly that makes me feel wistful for the days when the Oilogosphere was full of dirges for our departed heroes.

Ever the contrarian, I’m not wild about this deal, for reasons that I’ll explain. I’m not displeased with the move, because I don’t think it really costs that much, but I’m not sure how far it goes to making the Oilers a better hockey team.

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Way back when I first started writing this site, the Oilers traded for Dwayne Roloson. While this was initially a good thing that subsequently went bad, it also gave me an interesting post about whether or not the CBA permitted the Wild to make the type of trade that they made. The objection that I had to the deal, from a CBA perspective, was that the Wild were getting something that they didn’t have the right to. Specifically, the deal gave the Wild a pick that was conditional on the Oilers resigning Dwayne Roloson. My take was as follows:

Roloson is supposed to be unrestricted free agent but he’s effectively had a restraint put on that status by the deal made by the Wild and Oilers. Minnesota managed to do what the CBA otherwise prohibits and will collect compensation in certain circumstances. They had no interest in Roloson’s rights following this season but somehow managed to create a compensable interest, albeit a limited one. Theoretically, this will depress the market for those players services. To take Dwayne Roloson as an example, the Oilers are presumably now willing to pay slightly less than they otherwise would have been. This affects not only Roloson’s value but the value of every other goalie on the market.

A second post on the topic was here. Vic Ferrari made what I think was the best counter-argument to my position but it was one based on practicalities rather than the terms of the CBA: in Roloson’s specific case, it made sense to roll the dice on altering the market with going to Edmonton, so that he could get a chance to start instead of backup. Tough to argue with that, particularly with how it’s played out.

The Wild have just done another of these trades, as reported by Michael Russo of the Star-Tribune. Brian Rolston has been traded to Tampa Bay and if he signs, at any time, with the Lightning, the Wild get a pick from them. I don’t know how this can possibly comply with the CBA. Rolston’s supposed to be unrestricted and the Wild and Lightning have come to an agreement whereby he isn’t. I’m puzzled by the NHLPA’s refusal to address this, particularly with the increasing popularity of these types of move.