Oilers or Kings? [EDM 4-1]

[Ric O.]

Well, Knights must have thrown their last game of the season against the Ducks to avoid the Oilers...well done once again Vegas!  Kings get to face the Oilers instead.

So Oilers or Kings, who will win and how many games?

[Ric O.]

Maybe Dubois will finally decide to show up for a few games and dominate McDavid. I hope so but I don't think so. Oilers in 5.

[wolfmannick]

Oilers early, 4 or 5

[2b9]

Kings in 7.

[ekjet72]

Oil better play tighter D and avoid the unnecessary penalties. I am looking at you Evander and Nurse.
But I think they'll prevail in 5

[2b9]

Apr 19, 2024 8:48:03 GMT -6 ekjet72 said:

Oil better play tighter D and avoid the unnecessary penalties. I am looking at you Evander and Nurse.
But I think they'll prevail in 5

I’m still thinking that the Kings will do it in 7.

[darlyn]

Oils in 7, based on wishlist...lol

[2b9]

Apr 19, 2024 15:06:31 GMT -6 darlyn said:

Oils in 7, based on wishlist...lol

My wish list is the opposite, Kings in 7, and yeah, I can’t stand PLD, however, I can’t stand the Oilers as a whole.

2b9😉😃👍

[hillman]

The Oil in 6 . There's way to much omph on the Oil for the Kings

[2b9]

Apr 19, 2024 18:55:52 GMT -6 hillman said:

The Oil in 6 . There's way to much omph on the Oil for the Kings

Don’t be surprised if the Kings get it done.

Edmontons defensive play is suspect all around including their goaltending, I’m still going with the Kings in 7.

Cheers,

2b9😉😃👍

[ekjet72]

Refs and DuBois doing their best to give the game to the Oilers. They called an embellishment penalty.

[DEATHBYPOPCORN1990]

We really could have used PLD

[ekjet72]

You know I hardly knew Dubois was out there. Except when he took a dumb penalty which resulted in a goal.

[PeakyBlinders]

PLD comments from an article on the Athletic article today:

It’s too bad the NHL doesn’t have a trophy for Lightning Rod of the Year because that would be a different discussion altogether. And this year, the award would be passed from the Calgary Flames’ Jonathan Huberdeau to the Los Angeles Kings’ Pierre-Luc Dubois.

On Wednesday, the Kings were eliminated by the Edmonton Oilers in five games in the opening playoff round, another backward step from a year ago, when they pushed the Oilers to six games.

Special teams ultimately were the reason the Kings lost, but it was hard to watch Dubois play and wonder what was going on. Shift in, shift out, he seemed alternately disinterested, slow, unwilling to engage, and mostly out of sync with whomever he happened to be on the ice with. He was a maddeningly frustrating player to watch in previous stops in Winnipeg and Columbus because of his inconsistency, and that spilled over into his time in L.A.

Optically, the only thing that’s worse than owing Dubois an average of $8.5 million per season until the end of the 2030-31 season is the fact that his actual compensation — the real dollars that land in his pocket — goes up next year.

He’ll earn $11.25 million for 2024-25 and then he gets a further salary bump — to $11.35 million in 2025-26 — before his annual salary starts to drop.

Or to put it another way, next year, Dubois will earn more in actual dollars than Oilers superstar Connor McDavid, who will make $10 million in salary, though his AAV is $12.5 million.

After watching McDavid put on a show — he scored 12 points in the series, nine on the power play — that’s as disheartening as it gets.

The decision to acquire Dubois in a trade with the Winnipeg Jets was made organizationally and included significant input from team president Luc Robitaille, who has a longstanding relationship with Dubois’s agent, Pat Brisson. Ultimately, it’ll be up to the people who control the purse strings to determine what happens next because there is a simple, but expensive, solution to the problem — which is to admit they made a grievous error and pay the man to go away, via a buyout.
According to CapFriendly’s buyout calculator, the seven remaining years on Dubois’s contract are divided between base salary owed ($47.5 million) plus $11.5 million in signing bonuses. But if the Kings can buy out Dubois before his 26th birthday — it will be close, because Dubois turns 26 on June 24, right around the time the buyout period will open — they can buy him out for one-third of the remaining value of his contract. In all, the cost to do that isn’t terrible. It would be $15.833 million, but spread out over 14 years, which would cost them $1.131 million per year until 2038-39 season in actual dollars. The cap charges over that span would vary, but would only exceed $3 million three times in those 14 years.

And the savings against the cap right away would be enormous — almost $7 million per season the first two years, and almost $6 million in Year 3. Adopting that strategy, they would also save $31.666 million of owner Phillip Anschutz’s money, and also rid themselves of a player who didn’t fit at any moment of his short, sad tenure. The alternatives – trading him or keeping him around – seem like weak options at best. You’d have to retain money to trade him or give up a sweetener. And to hope that Year 1 was just an aberration and that Dubois will come around next year seems fraught with risk. Nothing he did this year gave even the slightest hint that was possible.

[2b9]

May 3, 2024 9:50:34 GMT -6 PeakyBlinders said:

PLD comments from an article on the Athletic article today:

It’s too bad the NHL doesn’t have a trophy for Lightning Rod of the Year because that would be a different discussion altogether. And this year, the award would be passed from the Calgary Flames’ Jonathan Huberdeau to the Los Angeles Kings’ Pierre-Luc Dubois.

On Wednesday, the Kings were eliminated by the Edmonton Oilers in five games in the opening playoff round, another backward step from a year ago, when they pushed the Oilers to six games.

Special teams ultimately were the reason the Kings lost, but it was hard to watch Dubois play and wonder what was going on. Shift in, shift out, he seemed alternately disinterested, slow, unwilling to engage, and mostly out of sync with whomever he happened to be on the ice with. He was a maddeningly frustrating player to watch in previous stops in Winnipeg and Columbus because of his inconsistency, and that spilled over into his time in L.A.

Optically, the only thing that’s worse than owing Dubois an average of $8.5 million per season until the end of the 2030-31 season is the fact that his actual compensation — the real dollars that land in his pocket — goes up next year.

He’ll earn $11.25 million for 2024-25 and then he gets a further salary bump — to $11.35 million in 2025-26 — before his annual salary starts to drop.

Or to put it another way, next year, Dubois will earn more in actual dollars than Oilers superstar Connor McDavid, who will make $10 million in salary, though his AAV is $12.5 million.

After watching McDavid put on a show — he scored 12 points in the series, nine on the power play — that’s as disheartening as it gets.

The decision to acquire Dubois in a trade with the Winnipeg Jets was made organizationally and included significant input from team president Luc Robitaille, who has a longstanding relationship with Dubois’s agent, Pat Brisson. Ultimately, it’ll be up to the people who control the purse strings to determine what happens next because there is a simple, but expensive, solution to the problem — which is to admit they made a grievous error and pay the man to go away, via a buyout.
According to CapFriendly’s buyout calculator, the seven remaining years on Dubois’s contract are divided between base salary owed ($47.5 million) plus $11.5 million in signing bonuses. But if the Kings can buy out Dubois before his 26th birthday — it will be close, because Dubois turns 26 on June 24, right around the time the buyout period will open — they can buy him out for one-third of the remaining value of his contract. In all, the cost to do that isn’t terrible. It would be $15.833 million, but spread out over 14 years, which would cost them $1.131 million per year until 2038-39 season in actual dollars. The cap charges over that span would vary, but would only exceed $3 million three times in those 14 years.

And the savings against the cap right away would be enormous — almost $7 million per season the first two years, and almost $6 million in Year 3. Adopting that strategy, they would also save $31.666 million of owner Phillip Anschutz’s money, and also rid themselves of a player who didn’t fit at any moment of his short, sad tenure. The alternatives – trading him or keeping him around – seem like weak options at best. You’d have to retain money to trade him or give up a sweetener. And to hope that Year 1 was just an aberration and that Dubois will come around next year seems fraught with risk. Nothing he did this year gave even the slightest hint that was possible.

Thanks for this, awesome on your part.

2b9😉😃👍