08/01/12 Rising: Ales Hemsky

Ales Hemsky's 2011-12 was so bad that it's hard to imagine that next season could be any worse. But there's also some actual evidence to suggest that we'll see a better Hemsky in 2012-13. Let's have a look-see.

06/04/12 The Salary Cap Spending Trap

The NHL salary cap has been raised to roughly $70.3 million, which is the number that general managers will work with in the off season. However, that number is only temporary and could trap a team or two in salary cap hell.

02/08/12 Odds & Ends: Gagner Facts

Sam Gagner continued his ridiculous scoring streak on Wednesday against Detroit. Despite the fact that he has missed 7 games this season due to injury, he is now on pace to set new career highs in goals (21) and points (57). This was the year he was supposed to take a step forward, and he may just be doing it.

Before this season Gagner had collected 173 points in 291 games, which is good for 0.59 points per game on average. He set a career high for goals as a sophomore with 16 and a career high for assists as a rookie with 36, but the last two injury-plagued seasons have seen his production drop off. Right now he's averaging 0.77 points per game and he needs just two more goals to match his output in the last two seasons.

Is this the shiny, new-and-improved Sam Gagner, or an anomaly?

It took Sam 64 games to score 13 goals last season, while this year he's done it in 47. There's some room for debate about whether or not he'll reach 20 goals this year, but unless his production falls off a cliff he should at least set a new career mark in that regard. With 13 goals on just 97 shots, Gagner has a shooting percentage of 13.4%. That's the highest of his career, but it's not outrageous for an NHL player.

As of this writing, Sam Gagner is a plus-2 on the season. If he manages to finish the year with a positive plus/minus it will be the first time in his career. His rookie season was the worst at minus-21, and last year he was minus-17. At least part of that has to do with the quality of team that he was on, but it's not like the Oilers are a playoff team right now. There's still plenty of hockey to be played though, and a plus-2 is too precarious to say that Gagner is absolutely going to be a plus player this year.

Gagner's faceoff percentage is better this year too; currently sitting at 48.8%. So far in his career Gagner's best year in the dot saw him win 47.4% of the time. That was two years ago. He regressed a little last season after taking a career high 935 draws and winning 43.8% of them, which is a reminder that we won't know the real story about the faceoff ability of #89 until the season is over. So far in 2011-12 he's taken only 324 draws.

Being a pending Restricted Free Agent means that Gagner is playing for a new contract. He won't keep up the pace he's currently at (8-7-15 in his last 5 games), but if he manages to keep scoring at his 0.77 p/g clip and finishes with 57 points he will be in some elite company. 57 points would have been good for the top 64 in points in the NHL last year. Among the players who scored 57 points:

Ray Whitney, Tuomo Ruutu, Justin Williams, Jason Spezza, Paul Stastny, Patrice Bergeron, Tomas Plekanec, RJ Umberger, Marian Hossa, Dustin Brown and Nikolai Kulemin

Average salary of those players: $4.53 million.

That's too high for Gagner at this point in his career. Many of those names listed above are established NHL veterans and Sam isn't there yet, but he's definitely in line for a raise. His number will probably fall in the $3 million to $4 million range, but it will be interesting to see how much term the Oilers commit.

Right now a lot of fans are probably looking for a deal that's somewhere in the order of 10 years.

02/05/12 Signs of Progress?

There are 30 games left on the schedule for the Oilers' 2011-12 season, and plenty of questions to be asked about how things are going. There have been a lot of criticisms, and long stretches of the year have been a struggle. But are things getting better? Below is a look at a few key areas after 52 games.

Let's start with the team record. The Oilers are currently sitting at 21-26-5 with 47 points. After 52 games in 2010-11 they were 15-29-8 with 38 points. The Oilers had 38 points after 52 games in 2009-10 as well, with a record of 16-30-6. That's 38 of a possible 104 points, while this year they've collected 47 of a possible 104.

The improvement isn't staggering, and it isn't going to cause anyone to jump out of their seats, but isn't that exactly the kind of marginal push forward that we all expected?

The Oilers' worst stretch of games this season were from November 26th to January 21st, where they went 5-18-2 in a 25 game span. They were without Ryan Whitney, Cam Barker, Tom Gilbert, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Taylor Hall and Corey Potter for all or part of that time. Hall was the quickest of the group to return, having missed 8 games including the one against Colorado where the injury occurred. Jordan Eberle was also out for 5 games in that downswing for the Oilers (including the one against Dallas), and in those games the Oil were 1-3-1. Without Hall the Oilers were 2-5-1.

It's a familiar tune from me at this point, but the Oilers aren't deep enough to be able to sustain those kinds of injuries at once at still remain competitive. Is there any team that could?

After 52 games last year the Oilers had:

- scored 113 goals
- allowed 173 goals against
- a goal differential of -60
- scored 23 powerplay goals
- allowed 50 powerplay goals against

Despite the injuries, this year they have:

- scored 135 goals (+22 over last year)
- allowed 148 goals against (+25 over last year)
- a goal differential of -13 (+47 over last year)
- scored 43 powerplay goals (+20 over last year)
- allowed 34 powerplay goals against (+16 over last year)

Obviously there's also the offensive strides taken by the Oilers' young, talented stars. Jordan Eberle has already eclipsed his team-leading 43 points from last season and is on pace for a lot more. It stands to reason that no fewer than five Oilers players will put up more than 43 points; including Gagner, Smyth, Hall, Nugent-Hopkins and Eberle.

This is still a team in 28th place in the NHL and there are still plenty of holes to fill, but there are signs that this thing has started to come around. When you're starting at the bottom that's not an especially difficult goal to accomplish, however. What this data shows is only that the team is improving, but there's a long way to go before we can think about Stanley.