The Difference Talent Makes

I had the great displeasure of watching last night's Columbus versus Edmonton tilt with a die hard Montreal fan. A short aside note here: I gave him 16-1 odds on montreal winning the cup this year, so if Montreal figures out a way of winning the cup, I owe him 320 bucks. I think I'm pretty safe in this bet though, we will have to see.

This particular fan said that there is no one on Montreal's top two lines that he would trade for Ales Hemsky, my first thought was that it is probably a good thing that a person this dumb isn't managing an NHL Hockey team.

My second thought was that this is unfortunate for the rest of the league, and fortunate for us. Ales Hemsky will probably always be kept the NHL's best kept secret. Unless the Oilers go on a Stanley cup run and make it really deep, or Ales Hemsky is traded he will probably always be hidden from the spotlight of the Eastern North America press monsters.

The one benefit to this lack of spotlight is that it tends to allow the team to sign the player for slightly less than market value when it comes time to extend/renew a RFA contract (A contract that other teams usually do not interfere with). This benefit is small though, because it is offset by the fact that if a player feels like he has been low-balled by a GM during his tenure with a club, this will make him more likely to want to leave that club. You have to believe that every GM in the league knows how good of a player Ales Hemsky is, and if Hemsky ever makes it to UFA status he will get some serious offers.

So just how good of a player is Ales Hemsky? Set aside the fact that we probably would have lost the last two games if it wasn't for him.

Where does Hemsky stack up in the list of Oiler greats? I did some comparisons to other Oiler greats (and some not-so-greats) to see where this slick winger fits in inside Oiler history.

Player Name	Games Played	Goals	GPG	Assists	APG	Points	PPG
Ales Hemsky	385	84	0.22	222	0.58	306	0.79
Wayne Gretzky	1487	894	0.60	1963	1.32	2857	1.92
Paul Coffey	1409	396	0.28	1135	0.81	1531	1.09
Mark Messier	1756	694	0.40	1193	0.68	1887	1.07
Ryan Smyth	889	300	0.34	337	0.38	637	0.72
Doug Weight	1168	272	0.23	729	0.62	1001	0.86
Jari Kurri	1251	601	0.48	797	0.64	1398	1.12
Dave Semenko	575	65	0.11	88	0.15	153	0.27
Mike Comrie	491	150	0.31	176	0.36	326	0.66
Miroslav Satan	995	350	0.35	365	0.37	715	0.72
Glenn Anderson	1129	498	0.44	601	0.53	1099	0.97
Chris Pronger	988	139	0.14	448	0.45	587	0.59
Ray Whitney	958	294	0.31	479	0.50	773	0.81
Esa Tikkanen	877	244	0.28	386	0.44	630	0.72
Craig Simpson	634	247	0.39	250	0.39	497	0.78
Jimmy Carson	626	275	0.44	286	0.46	561	0.90
Petr Klima	786	313	0.40	260	0.33	573	0.73
Martin Gelinas	1273	309	0.24	351	0.28	660	0.52

From a sheer numbers perspective, Hemsky's production falls somewhere between Craig Simpson and Doug Weight. Keep in mind it is a lot harder to score in the modern era than it was during Craig Simpson's era, and it's a little easier to score in the current era than it was in the Doug Weight era. (We don't have Patrick Roy and his Rubber Dingy Sized pads and Sumo Wrestler sized jersey to contend with)

Hemsky IS the Oilers right now. The one difference that the Oilers currently have against Columbus is that there are two or three more talented players on the Oilers than in Columbus. Columbus has Rick Nash, and Kristian Huselius, and then the talent pool steeply drops off.

Oilers have lots of depth in the talent pool, but most of it has been under-performing for most of the year.

In order of decending Talent: Hemsky, Visnovsky, Cole, Horcoff, Souray. This says nothing about work ethic mind you, and the talent we have waiting in the wings with Cogs, Nillson, Gagner, Gilbert, Brule could make your head spin if we could ever put everything together.

I think maybe by getting rid of Garon, maybe the Oilers have isolated their identity somewhat. Kevin Lowe has basically said that he is sick of waiting for Garon to get his act together, and we will go with the average but relatively consitant goal tending of Roloson to try and get through the season. The offence knows this now, and realizes that they are going to have to score 3 goals or more each game if they want to have a chance at winning the game.

If Hemsky can play the second half like he played the last two games the Oilers are going to the show.