The West: On The Eve Of The Deadline

And so the Oilers go into Trade Deadline Day still holding strong, or not-so-strong, at 7th place in the West. I didn't think the Oil looked that bad tonight, I did think that our defense clearly did not know how to cover all of Nashville's men on the rush, and that led to a few more goals than we'd like. Goaltending wasn't particularly spectacular for either team, but there were a few positives for Edmonton: Ladislav Smid played one of the best games he has ever played at the NHL level, and of course I love it when he plays well; Sam Gagner had an excellent game, simply put if he wasn't playing last night we wouldn't have even managed a single point; and last, Erik Cole continues on his recent tirade of goal-scoring and making good plays.

But this post is a look at the Western Conference so let's get on with it.

As I write this there are still two games yet to finish that effect the Western standings, so the standings are not final at this point, but they will be in a couple of hours.

Right now the standings look like this:

San Jose
Detroit
Calgary
Chicago
Vancouver
Columbus
Edmonton
Nashville
---------
Anaheim
Minnesota**
Dallas**
St Louis
Los Angeles
Phoenix
Colorado

** Position could change.
-- Playoff Cut-off

Colorado is now 10 points out of the playoffs and may be looking to sell some assets, free agents include: Joe Sakic, Tyler Arnason, Ian Laperriere, Ben Guite, Brian Willsie, Jordan Leopold, and Daniel Tjarnqvist.

Phoenix is also a team that is almost 10 points out of the race and may also be looking to free up some cap space for the off-season and maybe get some picks and prospects for their future. Free agents include: Steve Reinprecht, Derek Morris, Ken Klee and Mikael Tellqvist.

Every one else is still in the hunt and will be looking for additions, preferably without subtractions, to help push them into the playoffs. There is a rather large log-jam happening around the final three or four playoff spots that involves Dallas, Minnesota, Anaheim, Nashville, Edmonton, Columbus and Vancouver and that is what is going to limit most of the movement of players around the West, because there are so many teams that are still in the race.

There are some teams in the East that are likely looking to drop some players and salary as well.

Ottawa: Free agents: Mike Comrie, Chris Neil, Filip Kuba, and Martin Gerber.

Tampa: Free agents: Gary Roberts, Mark Recchi, Matt Pettinger, David Koci, Marek Malik, Josef Melichar, Cory Murphy and Olaf Kolzig.

Atlanta: Free agents: Marty Reasoner and Eric Perrin.

NYI: Bill Guerin, Doug Weight, Mike Sillinger, Andy Hilbert, Tim Jackman, Dean McAmmond, Thomas Pock, Joey MacDonald and Yann Danis.

Toronto: Free agents: Nik Antropov, Domonic Moore, Brad May, Boyd Devereaux and Curtis Joseph.

In terms of names being thrown around that aren't necessarily on the FA listings here are a few of the big names being discussed around the league: Ilya Kovalchuk, Colby Armstrong, Chris Pronger, Olli Jokinen, Robert Nilsson, Jay Bouwmeester, Alexander Frolov. I am sure there are more, but I can't think of them.

There are a lot of options for Edmonton, and other teams in a similar position, to look into, and some will be more open and helpful than others. I don't want the team to sell future for current production, so I think I'll be okay if it turns out that we couldn't find anything that really suited our team and its future.

Tomorrow will be most interesting.

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