Today the Oilers finalized and announced a deal to resign Zack Kassian to a 3 year deal with an AAV of $1.95 million dollars. The deal will keep the bottom six forward on the team until he is 29 years old.
All things considered, this should be a just fine deal for the Oilers. Kassian has taken upon himself to turn his life and his game around since a late night motor-vehicle accident ended his time as a Montreal Canadien. This past year Kassian had 7-17-24 in 79 games.
His game is a combination of speed and aggression and he’s capable of scoring at a decent rate. Even with three goals called back by coach’s challenge, he managed to produce 1.74 ponts per 60 minutes, which was essentially the same as Jordan Eberle. He is tantalizingly close, it seems, to unlocking his offensive potential at all times.
It just feels like he has another gear he can hit if it ever all unlocks for him. Whether it does or not, it’s likely he’ll deliver value on his almost $2 million dollar cap hit. He was a sub-50% possession player whether we use Corsi or Fenwick, which we would like to see improve. However, he was closest to break even when playing with Letestu.
The only other Oiler specific news of the day was that news started to spread that the team would like to re-sign Eric Gryba for another year. This would lock up Edmonton’s top 7 as the exact same as the year before. I recognize that there will be a lot of water carrying going on in Edmonton when this happens. That is to say that members of the media will defend Chiarelli’s “strategy”, but I cannot.
That said, Eric Gryba is the 7 spot is hardly the biggest problem and biggest opportunity lost on Edmonton’s defense. We wait to see how this shakes out. So far, I have my concerns.
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