Edmonton Oilers Need To Trade For A Starting Goalie

 

Goaltending has been one of the Edmonton Oilers‘ biggest issues for years, which is something they have tried to fix without anything working. This season, Edmonton tried to make two backup goalies into starting goalies, and it hasn’t worked. Edmonton needs to trade for a legitimate starting NHL goalie now.

Edmonton’s season has so far been split between goalies Anders Nilsson and Cam Talbot. The Oilers currently sit at the bottom of the Pacific Division and at the bottom of the standings in the NHL. They also have the fourth-most amount of goals scored against in the league.

This just shows that neither Nilsson or Talbot have what it takes to be Edmonton’s starting goalie. Nilsson has the better record this season with five wins in 12 games with a goals against average of 2.75 and a save percentage of .911 percent. That isn’t too bad considering he is playing for the worst team in the league. Talbot has yet to find any sliver of success this season with only three wins in 13 games with an awful goals against average of 3.17 and a save percentage of .889 percent.

The mistake that Edmonton made is expecting goalies that just don’t have enough NHL experience to be able to help the worst team in the league. Nilsson had only played two seasons in the NHL before this year, with only 19 games in 2013-14 being the most games he had played in a single NHL season.

Talbot, although playing more games, had also only played two seasons at the NHL level before this season. With 21 games in 2013-14 and 36 games in 2014-15. It’s somewhat understandable as to why Edmonton would take the chance on Talbot, which is that he played very well with only six losses in 2013-14 and just nine in 2014-15. But Talbot had the New York Rangers in front of him, arguably one of the best teams in the NHL and also one of the best teams defensively.

Most goalies could succeed playing for a team like the Rangers, but with Edmonton, it’s totally different since they’ve been terrible defensively for years.

The kind of goalie that Edmonton should target is a mature goalie that is expendable to his team, either that the team is in a rebuild or he is being pushed out by a younger goalie. The two goalies that Edmonton should target specifically are James Reimer of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Jimmy Howard of the Detroit Red Wings.

Toronto is rebuilding so they can afford to lose Reimer since they don’t really need a great goalie until they are ready to be contenders, and in Detroit it’s clear they’re wanting to go with Petr Mrazek over Howard. It’s doubtful that Howard would be happy being a backup goalie, which would make Edmonton seem more appealing if he can have the starting role.

Edmonton needs to make a move now before their season becomes irredeemable.