Scrivens Demoted to AHL

The Edmonton Oilers goaltending situation was pretty cloudy heading into training camp, but it was hard to see the clouds through the smoke.  For the most part, most people knew when the team acquired Cam Talbot from the New York Rangers at the draft, that he was aiming to be the number one guy in the 2016 season, unseating Ben Scrivens for the job.  The Oilers also picked up a non-household name during the off-season in Anders Nilsson, who was also going to be gunning for a job and to the surprise of many, he won one.

On Sunday morning, the Oilers announced that they had placed Scrivens on waivers for the purpose of assignment, which means that if he clears, he will be heading to the minors to start the season, but it also means that he and his $4.8 million cap hit are now available to be scooped up by any team for nothing, assuming that they want to take on that big cap hit and a goalie that may have gotten another raw deal in Edmonton.

With salary cap issues prevalent in the NHL right now, any team that is looking to pick up talent is not looking for a big name player, rather they are looking to just puddy over some cracks with some cheap talent, trying to work out their opening night roster for competitiveness purposes.

The Oilers, who were able to bury non-pool defenseman Nikita Nikitin over the last 24 hours, combined with the possibility of burying Scrivens' deal, will have $7.45 million against their cap ceiling this year in the AHL, potentially.  I'm sure they are going to be shopping both players through the year, looking for teams desperate for help, but there is also a chance that either/or could come back and help the Oilers before too long.

With goalies being a hot commodity in this year's draft, lots of top end talent went pretty early, but not Scrivens.  No, Cindy's team couldn't get two goalies right away, so she waited until the very end to get her second keeper, taking Scrivens with the 370th overall pick, in the last (14th) round of the draft.  Cindy will now have to rely upon Jonathan Bernier to keep her team alive in the goalie survivor pool, at least for the first nine weeks.

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