(Row, Row, Rowbear your boat gently down shit creek without a paddle)$1,285,000, that is the salary cap savings that the Oilers would have if they dealt Robert Nilsson for picks or prospects, or sent him down in favor of Rob Schremp. Neither player was a favorite of former coach Craig Mactavish, and both get a fresh start with Pat Quinn and Tom Renney this pre season. Nilsson was all but handed a spot in '07-08 while Schremp has never had that luxury in his 3 pro seasons with the Oilers.
These 2 players could have been interchangeable as far as I've been concerned the last 2 seasons. However it is doubtful that even if the Oilers had acquired a second pick in the Smyth deal instead of Rowbear, that Schremp would've gotten the same opportunity as Nilsson had. One thing is for sure, Robert Nilsson had better live up to his billing in '07-08 as "Hemsky-lite" if he expects to keep the Oil drop on his jersey.
Barring a sub par pre season from Schremp or a ridiculously good one from Nilsson, it seems as if Schremp may have positioned himself to start the year an Oiler, and for the first time in a long time the odds could be in his favor. Of course that just means that the Oilers will follow up the news of this signing with the signing of Mike Comrie. Bank on it LOL!
5 comments:
Hey Bryan. What have I been saying the last few months at least?
That Schremp's best shot at either sticking on the Oil roster (or getting picked up on waivers). Would be to keep the NHL portion of his salary nice and low.
In fact the number I have been throwing out all along was 700k. Apparently Schremp and his agent agreed with this strategy.
The big theory I was expousing was that if he out plays Nilsson. Then we get basically the same player but at a greatly reduced cost and a nice chunk of free cap space on top of it. Once Nilsson would be sent down to the farm (I have my doubts he will garner much trade interest right now) of course.
But also it might not hurt either that he signed for 100k less than Brule. With the cap crunch on every bit counts.
Though like you said watch them go out now and sign Comrie. Something I have not in favour of all along. I will cheer him on and hope for the best if we do sign him. But he is not what we need and I doubt he comes as cheap as 1.3 mill either.
We've been on the same boat although I didn't expect him to accept such a low AHL salary considering 2 years ago he was an AHL allstar. He certainly made his contract very friendly to teams that may have already been interested in his services. If he comes into camp at the top of his game, IMO Rowbear is toast. Then at the end of the year he gets a small raise, we resign Pisani for 1/2 of what he's been getting and dump Staios and we have some cap room as long as the cap doesn't drop, too far.
Yeah we are definitely on the same page here.
Another point of interest might be with Pat Quinn and his past history. IMO Schremp and Kyle Wellwood in some ways are similar guys.
Both can produce but rely fairly heavily on their PP skills. They both play a similar style to an extent. In 05/06 Wellwood had his best offensive year (his break into the NHL season) and it was under Pat Quinn.
So clearly the new head coach has some history of finding room for this type of player. Quinn may assign more importance to Robbie's PP skills than a guy like MacT would. Just a thought
Earlier this summer, I might have shared your sentiments about Schremp being a cheaper version of Nilsson. It wouldn't be a huge stretch to think that Schremp could post 29 points like Nilsson did last season assuming he played a similar number of games/minutes.
The key difference would be that based on past performance, Schremp would likely bleed goals and scoring chances against relative to Nilsson (plus/minus, Corsi, GF-GA).
Bottom line, Schremp played sheltered minutes in the AHL last season and he had the worst plus/minus on his team (-25 or so). Nilsson played in the NHL and finished the season +1.
Hockey Noob-Last season was not a season to judge him by. There were a number of things that went off the rails last season for himself and the team in Springfield.
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