Barrie is THAT bad defensively lol can’t be worse than Gustafsson tho 😂

Bear has been worse. Every time a team forechecked bear and Jones they got the puck coughed up to them because they panicked.

From what I gather from April 13th on teams get their 23 Man Roster then pick 4 players to be on the Taxi squad there is no room for Benson on the roster or taxi squad.

Same player, different stick.

How much more obvious do you want to make it that you don't actively watch the games, and instead just regurgitate media bytes from the Sun and the depths of Twitter? Bear and Jones are two of our better puck-moving defenders. Bear's simply been our best defender over the past 10 games.

The four recall thing only applies for the rest of the season. Roster and cap limits evaporate for the playoffs.

LOL Barrie out of the lineup? I agree he's not great defensively but him and Nurse have been decent together. If you think "optimizing the lineup" means scratching Barrie you are insane. Bouchard is a significant downgrade offensively him and Barrie are not comparable in that respect. Defensively Bouchard isn't great either so I really don't understand that at all. Bear playing top line minutes is a death wish as well.

I would bet on Bouchard. Bear gets far too much credit for what he did last year though. Everyone forgets Bear lost his job to Barrie, he started on the first pairing.

Barrie is a sieve defensively yes but he still outscores his mistakes.

Bear has been decent as of late but he's not a top pairing dman whatsoever.

I watched Jones and bear get the puck taken off them every time they played a heavy forechecking line. They get backed up into their own corner and make bad plays.

Here's the consequences of just looking at statlines: you lose all of the context from the games.

Bouchard leads all Oilers defencemen in CF% (53.97%). Bear is 2nd (52.30%), and Barrie is 5th (49.59%). Jones, Bear, and Bouchard are first, second, and third in Fenwick% and second, third, and first (respectively) in SF%. In terms of xGF%, Bear, Jones, and Bouchard are 1st, 2nd, and 4th on the Oilers, all above 50%. Barrie is 5th with a 47.79%.

The only positive on-ice metric Barrie has is his GF% (51.95%). Everything else is sub-50%. He's an active anchor on Nurse, who's having the best run of his career. Bear excelled with Nurse last season and Tippett actively defaults to a Nurse-Bear pairing during the final 5 minutes of every game.

Bear, Bouchard, and Jones are the victim of Koskinen's first 10 games and the stinker he laid against the Leafs.

Given that powerplays drastically evaporate come the playoffs, relying on Barrie's 6.27P/60 on the powerplay isn't going to cut it. Bouchard scores at a 1.49 P/60 rate at even strength, Barrie has posted a 1.52 P/60 at evens. There's no sacrifice to offence here but a substantial defensive upgrade.

Thanks for coming.

When? The first 10 games of the season when Koskinen couldn't stop a beach ball and Larsson literally dragged Jones' numbers down single-handedly? Or when Bear was forced to play too soon after his concussion? Jones and Bear are two of Edmonton's four best defencemen. Objectively. No doubts about it.

I don't think they pair well together, but we know that Bear pairs excellently with Nurse and the Jones-Larsson pairing has had a resurgence. The addition of Kulikov gives Bouchard an optimal partner. Unless you simply don't like the colour of either Bear or Jones' skin, this is a pretty open-and-shut situation. That setup represents Edmonton's 6 best defenders. Barrie's a #7 powerplay specialist and neither Lagesson or Russell have played at an NHL level for a month now.

Thats bull**** that you are playing the race card. For the record I am in favor of putting Bear as a partner for Nurse next year and not bringing back Barrie I don't bel;ieve bear is incapable he did it last year, but there is something up, it's like Bear was totally unprepared to play hockey when he came into camp. You have Jones who has not been able to reign things in defensively, so much so that Russell belongs off the lineup and has now elevated to second pairing because there is no consistency from the left side. Lagesson had an extended look because he was consistent and tough in front of the net which led to some confidence from the coach but he is probably done with being a regular player now because he can't play at the pace he needs to to be in the NHL. The LD has been so bad that holland had to go out and make a trade to shore it up. Bear has had bright spots and also pretty bad times this season. He's been a damn poor skater until the last couple of games and he still hasn't found what he needs to play against the other team's best this season. His strengths last year were his steadiness, his decision making and he was quicker getting to and moving the puck and now that is all in doubt. Barrie at least gets the puck and does something productive with it most times, his skating is also far better which gives him a tool to get out of trouble when he gets fore-checked. You can't honestly think that Tippett is constantly rotating Lagesson, Jones, Russell because Jones is doing such a good job? He's making the same mistakes over and over.

I'm aware of the stats and I'm an advanced stat guy myself but I simply don't just base my player evaluations off of them. I'm aware Barrie's underlying numbers aren't great but I'm also not going to take a guy out of the lineup who has played in the Top 4 on every team he's played for, why? Because NHL coaches and executives know a lot more about hockey then you and I. Based on my eye test Bouchard is a liability every time he is stuck out against any of the opponents top 6 forwards. Bear played his way off of the top pairing where Barrie played his way onto it. Why is this relevant? Because again there's a reason he's playing on the top pairing, Tippet likes him there and again he knows way more about hockey then you and I. IDK why I'm trying cuz I can tell by your smug thanks for coming at the end you think advanced stats is the answer to everything and you think you know more then everyone else but here we go anyway.

Bouchard has too small of a sample size for me to really evaluate his advanced stats against Barrie's. If Bouchard were to play top pairing minutes against better competition like Barrie I'm almost positive he would be more of a liability on d then Barrie. He's been burned several times by opponents top players. He's played in a 1/3 of the games and never plays more then 15 minutes. He has 4 pts in 12 games, too small of a sample size to say he's better then one of the NHL's better offensive dman.

Bear is better defensively, although he's still not great and I don't think he makes up the Offensive gap there. Sure put him with Nurse at the end of games when you have the lead but playing him more then 18-20 minutes a nigh isn't a good idea.

Barrie has been good and I agree he is getting more credit then he deserves the advanced stats show that but taking him out of your lineup is preposterous for someone who has been good for the oilers. Those defensive advanced stats numbers are to be expected. He's an Offensive Dman playing against the other teams top two lines most shifts. I would take those numbers for him, they're not great, but not terrible As for the PP's they are still huge in the playoffs. There are less of them, but it makes them more meaningful. There have been very few teams who win the Cup with poor special teams, they are so crucial in the playoffs. In terms of metrics Dallas and Tampa were fairly even last year at 5on5, Tampa was slightly better. Dallas had no chance in that series tho because Dallas went 1/19 on the PP.

You don't know more then NHL coaches or exec's so why on earth would you think taking Barrie who has had a career year out of the lineup is what's best for the oilers when ppl who know more then you have him on the top pair.

A lot of writers said that the Oilers need a TOP4 LHD. It's funny that Edmonton has one defenseman like that on the roster, but Dave Tippett has been keeping him in the press box often. Caleb Jones is great, underrated defensive defenseman. pic.twitter.com/GXHkAmafl6

— Andy & Rono 📊 (@HockeyStatsCZ) April 7, 2021

Jones has never been the problem. Look at those numbers. This man is one of the best defencemen available (93rd percentile!!!!).

Bear was fine to start the season until he ended up concussed. He had a bad 2 or 3 game stretch when he came back too early from his concussion and has been lights out since.

Lagesson is a hair of an upgrade over Russell. He can't make a pass to save his life, and if it wasn't for his skating he wouldn't be in the NHL right now.

All of Barrie's numbers indicate that Nurse is the only thing keeping him remotely tolerable at the moment. He provides no defensive value, only offensive. He will absolutely cost us a series if Tippett continues to play him above his ability. Bouchard is an undisputed upgrade. I don't care about your feelings. The numbers are objective. They don't lie. Barrie's been fun sure, but we should have moved him today in order to accomodate a move up front. Horrible asset management by this club.

The part of your quote I bolded is super important to focus on: Tippett rotates these guys because he has no clue as to where his roster strengths lie. Jones should never be out of the lineup. Russell should never be in it.

If the Oilers keep bleeding chances against, and the majority of those happen when Russell is on the ice, then bringing in Kulikov should naturally signal that he's a Russell replacement. What part of this are you refusing to understand?

Barrie was a bottom-pairing option for the Leafs for most of his tenure and he's been rotated up and down the lineup in Edmonton until he found a hot streak with Nurse. That streak has since evaporated. Tippett defaults to Nurse-Bear for the back halves of games. If he can't trust Barrie where he is now during the regular season, why should he be an option for the playoffs? Those games matter, these ones much less so.

Get the hell out of here with the "Bear played his way off the top pair" nonsense. The kid had his brain blown in by a dirty hit and was out for weeks. He came back too soon, had a couple bad games, and has been one of Edmonton's best defencemen since returning to form.

I absolutely will not believe that anyone in Edmonton's management system knows more about hockey than the majority of Oiler fans. We invented the hockey blogosphere and the majority of the advanced stats we use today. Shoutout Tyler Dellow. The Oilers make moves in bad faith (see: the Chiarelli Era, burning assets on AA, being afraid to make moves to bring in a top-six forward this deadline) more often than they make good moves. Almost none of the front office beyond Chiarelli has been overhauled. It's the same scouts, same opinions, and the Oilers have the same outcome year over year.

I was only smug because of how you approached the AGM. It's more than apparent you don't watch Oilers games, and I find it borderline impossible to believe that you subscribe to analytics if you still think Bear is a poor option for the top pair. Feel free to have an opinion, you're entitled to it, but it doesn't mean you can't be wrong. The numbers are very objective. With the context I have from having seen the game (my heart sinks literally whenever Russell touches the puck) I can confidently use them to establish how I'd run my lines.



The only reason why Bouchard hasn't been playing is because neither Holland or Tippett know how to adjust their plans to the modernity of the NHL. Tippett values veterans that often repeat poor performances because they have tenure (or something). He refuses to rotate guys in/out on back-to-backs. He's an absolute dinosaur and the game has passed him by. Holland's just as guilty for sitting his top prospect in the pressbox for the majority of the season. Koskinen fails to make two long-distance saves and he hasn't seen any icetime since. They're afraid of the 7 days he'd need to quarantine and won't send him down because of it, despite his currently being the "#8 defender" on this team.

Yes it's a small sample size, but until he shows that he can't be used in that role, he should have every shot at it. Bouchard is an upgrade to Barrie, or at the very least breaks even with him, at essentially every facet of the game. If Tippett had more than a double-digit IQ and decided to play Bouchard in every game Edmonton had left this season, I'm certain his numbers would not dip to Barrie's.

Why is playing Bear for more than 18 minutes per night a bad idea? The sample size says he's more than comfortable eating 20, especially if paired with Nurse.



Barrie's been decent. He's a secondary assist machine and a healthy portion of those don't actually impact the play. Bouchard developed a very similar skillset in junior, the AHL, and in the Allsvenskan to what Barrie provides offensively, but has a booming shot to boot. If Edmonton's top three forwards continue to generate the powerplay offense that they do, it really doesn't matter if it's Barrie or Bouchard on the point.

At the end of the day, I even admit none of this setup would ever happen. It requires the two men in charge of this roster to think outside the box, which is a skill they've shown to lack. All Oilers fans can do is hope for the best against the Jets, then pray they don't get humiliated by the Leafs should they make it that far.

I pay attention to adv. stats bcuz they can be a decent tool when comparing similar players, so many things happen in the game of hockey that cannot be measured by advanced stats tho. I watch almost every oilers game and by my eye test I think Barrie has been a pleasant suprise and has been decent. He never played less then top 4 minutes in TO, he played a bit on the 3rd pair but he was still in that 18-20 minute range and was actually ok when Babcock left. But again I can't argue with you if your stubborn enough to think you know more then NHL management. They get paid millions to do their jobs while you and I sit at home and watch the games on our TV's, our opinions are irrelevant.

There were talks about the Blues hiring Chiarelli. The same 40 guys are recycled in upper hockey management. Very few of them know what they're doing.

I'd argue that Dubas and McCrimmon are the only two in the league worth their paychecks. Lou's not bad but he makes 2 questionable smaller moves for every good, big move he makes.