The Big Ten: #6, C Jarret Stoll

Lord Bob | 05 October, 2007 09:57

We Stoll two points last night.Jarret the Stollman,
Was a jolly happy soul.
With a graphite stick,
And a big ol' shot
And an eye towards the goal.

Jarret the Stollman,
Wanted us to win the Cup,
So he went in on the SJ Sharks,
And he ate them all up.

There's nothing better than writing an article on the importance of a player to a hockey team less than twenty-four hours after said player was one of the heroes in an utterly magnificent season-opening victory. It lends a warm feeling to the heart, a sort of "hey, I'm not entirely stupid after all" sort of feeling. I hasten to add that we got a roaring night from number ten on this list against the best line in the NHL, and I'm going to preen a little at that too.

The questions around Jarret Stoll revolve around two points: his development and his brain. Stoll has already exceeded the norm from his draft position: 206 NHL games and still going strong, with only Matt Stajan and Matthew Lombardi besting him later in the draft, and neither with his production to date. Yet Stoll only turned 25 in June, and while he is approaching his prime, he certainly still has some improving left to do. Stoll's ceiling is that of an excellent second-line centre, with 68 points in 2005-06 representing a very solid figure. Even if Stoll doesn't improve a lick during 2007-08, we're going to be quite happy to have him.

On the other hand, Jarret Stoll as, say, a 75-point, 30-goal man suddenly becomes a brilliant piece of the puzzle. Not a lot of second-line centres in the NHL record that kind of production, and even fewer combine it with Stoll's secondary skills (his positive defense, his top-five faceoff skill, and his on- and off-ice leadership). Although his linemates will prove a stumbling block, it's at least possible for Stoll to hit those lofty targets, and if he can hit 70 points and 25 goals I think we'll all be exceptionally happy.

In the other corner is his skull. Stoll's 2006-07 concussion problems were really the harbinger of doom for the Oilers. When he went down, it effectively marked our end as a contender for the season, as other injuries and ridiculous slumps soon followed. Stoll was obviously not the cause for all that went wrong, but he was a milestone, and his fall left the Oilers with no solutions beyond Shawn Horcoff and Marty Reasoner at centre. Unfortunately, that situation has not much changed, with Marc Pouliot completely failing to take the third-line role many of us had pencilled him in for. Worse, Cogliano seems best on the wing at the NHL level, and any man who'd throw Gagner on the two-line with Raffi Torres and Robert Nilsson must be a Flames fan.

Shawn Horcoff is more important to this team, but with Shawn Horcoff, you more-or-less know what you're going to get. The reason Jarret Stoll is higher on this list is because there's no basement and a pretty high ceiling. Nobody would be surprised if Stoll scrambled his eggs while falling into the boards and missed another forty games. If Stoll mustered ten goals and forty points this year, it would be alarming but not entirely unexpected. If he (as we saw in Game One) absolutely roared and managed to get damned near a point per game, there'd be some huge grins in the Oilogosphere but nobody would ask "where the hell did that come from?"

Luckily, we can count on a few things from Stoll. He's probably still going to win 56% to 58% of his faceoffs, as per usual. His physical conditioning has never been in doubt, and we've historically seen that he has an excellent ability to finish up a season every bit as strong as he started it. In spite of his injury, Stoll was fourth on the team in powerplay points last year, and his faceoff skill and shot alone should ensure that he'll be in that ballpark for 2007-08. Unless his concussion has turned him into an "I LIEK SOUP"-level intellect, and there's no reason to believe it has, he's going to continue to be a powerful influence on the team. He's an alternate captain on this team for road games, and even though the team's got five of the twenty-one skaters on the roster wearing some sort of letter, that still means something.

(See? I got "alternate captain" this time!)

If something bad happens, of course, we're screwed. And there's room for something bad to happen. One conk on the head and he could go down. Almost as bad, his concussion could slow him down: post-concussion syndrome can take quite a while to show up, and there are other, subtler problems which may dog our second-line centreman without taking him out of the lineup. Stoll insists he's fine, but, then, athletes always do. I suspect that if Fernando Pisani had his druthers, he'd be killing penalties while the doctor was operating on his colon. And if Stoll falls or struggles, we're looking forty games of the Rob Schremp Experience dead in the eye. While this would be entertaining as hell, it wouldn't win us a lot of hockey games.

The trouble with Stoll is that even if he is healthy and he does give us a seventy-point season, it's still not going to throw this team over the edge. Realistically, we're expecting sixty-five to seventy points out of Stoll this year. A career year would be nice, but second-line centres don't win Stanley Cups unless they're Mark Messier or Ron Francis. He may have a magnificent individual season and prove, once again, that he's a dazzling hockey player who will hopefully retire an Oiler, but he's not going to the All-Star Game, he's not winning a trophy except maybe the Masterton, he's not going to be Offensive Player of the Month, and Pierre Maguire isn't going to froth at the mouth during a playoff game against Anaheim declaring how much of a monster Jarret Stoll is. At the same time, there's an awful lot of pressure on him, and if he stumbles the Oilers are not going to be looking good.

Which is a tough position for any player to be in. Let's hope he's just scrambled enough that he forgets all about it.

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