Ales Hemsky has no backup
The Edmonton Journal’s David Staples had an interesting blog post on Ales Hemsky’s contract, and why it is one of the best pieces of business Kevin Lowe did during his tenure as the Oilers’ general manager.
Here, he says, is a guy that’s scored close to a point a night when he’s been healthy over the last three years, and he’s locked up for another two seasons at an affordable $4.1 million dollars. That’s pretty good. Several fantasy hockey guides are also expecting him to have a breakout offensive year, which would only help the much-improved Oilers.
But here’s what Staples worries about: the team’s ability to protect Hemsky.
But when Pronger left, so did much of team’s edge.
Since then, in the past two years, Hemsky has taken a number of savage hits, many of them illegal late hits, partly because of his propensity to overhandle the puck, which gives time for various thugs to line him up, but also because other teams have feared no retribution.
Thus, Staples posits, Hemsky’s going to play like 50 games before someone drills him badly. It’s already happened a lot of times. A Youtube search for “Hemsky hit” bears that out. “Nasty hit on Ales Hemsky by Robyn Regehr,” “Boogaard vs. Edmonton, Hemsky,” “Ott hits Hemsky,” “Ohlund hit on Hemsky,” Beachemin hit on Hemsky.” That’s Hemmer getting roughed up by some big, mean boys.
It might be a little unfair to put Edmonton’s offensive hopes all on Hemsky, but if he goes down (and should he keep taking hits like that, he will), the Oilers aren’t exactly going to be overflowing with offensively gifted players. Zach Stortini isn’t a good enough thug to be a deterrent.
