More photos » Jimmy Jeong - AP

6 months ago: Edmonton Oilers center Jordan Eberle (14) checks New York Islanders left wing Jesse Joensuu (58) during the third period of an NHL hockey gane in Edmonton, Alberta, on Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2009. Edmonton beat New York 3-2. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jimmy Jeong)

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To the lay Oilers fan, Jordan Eberle is the great hope. Renowned for his clutch goals in the World Junior Championships and his exceptional senior season in the Western Hockey League, Eberle is probably Edmonton's greatest "love him or hate him" prospect since Rob Schremp. His detractors have plenty to point at: his mediocre speed, his uninspiring WHL totals before this year, and of course the condemnation of the World Junior Championships as a small sample size and the concept of "clutchness" as a chimera with no place in the modern game.

Evaluating junior prospects can always be difficult. While Eberle's numbers are far short of those of a Sam Gagner, his Regina Pats were also far worse than the teams most blue chip prospects enjoy. Context is everything, and with no known quantities to compare him to we are left to history on one hand and the orgasmic moments he gifts us with during his rare televised appearances on the other. It's sometimes not until a prospect turns professional and plays with and against men of certain ability that we can start to properly evaluate a prospect.

Jordan Eberle may just be one of these. Last season, after the Regina Pats were eliminated from the playoffs, an 18-year-old Eberle played his first games in the American Hockey League with the dreary Springfield Falcons, appearing in a total of nine contests. This year, the Pats have once again fallen out of the playoff picture and Eberle has gotten into one game so far. It is a small sample size, but it is also a teenager leaping straight from junior into second-tier professional hockey without so much as a training camp to find his sea legs.

An examination of each of those ten games follows after the jump.

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MONTREAL, QC - JUNE 27: Anton Lander of the Edmonton Oilers puts on a team jersey after being drafted by Head Scout Stu MacGregor of the Edmonton Oilers in the second round of the 2009 NHL Entry Draft. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) Content © 2010 Getty Images All rights reserved. via cdn.picapp.com

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Anton Lander seems to suffer from some kind of disorder that forces him to be huge in big games. He's had a tough time after the World Junior Championships but scores big goals in the last two games of regular season. I've followed him for many years now and have seen this time after time, both with the junior national team and in Timra. It's no coincidence that Lander scored the game-winning goal in this game, that's for sure!

 

When we played 4 on 5 late in the game with the one goal lead we got a 50/50 chance to get a 2 on 2 break for a shorthanded goal but the 18 year old who newly-scored the goal of his life was cool enough to go and get a line change that helped us live through that crucial short-handed situation and win the game.

--Jimmy Hamrin, Timra Blogger.

As Ben would say, on a scale from one to ten Eberles, Anton Lander is a perfect ten.  Lander's late season heroics dragged Timrå into the Swedish Elite League playoffs and his third period in the final game against Lulea will be the stuff of legend for years to come. On the back of Timrå's huge win and dramatic qualification for the playoffs, Anton was gracious enough to agree (in English) to an interview with a guy that asked for the interview using Google translate.  To eliminate any language barrier and to bring a level of personality to an interview that a cell phone conversation cannot provide, our good friend Jimmy Hamrin, the intrepid Swedish blogger that follows Timrå, rain or shine, agreed to meet with Anton in Timrå to conduct the interview for The Copper & Blue.  I cannot thank Jimmy enough for translating my questions into Swedish and translating Anton's answers back into English - C&B is forever indebted to Jimmy for his work.  After the jump is our conversation, through Jimmy, with Anton Lander.

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Linus Omark may be the first prospect in Oilers history who has generated more hype than his actual body weight. A 5'9", 168-pound YouTube sensation, the ingredients are all there for Omark to create more buzz than actual NHL offense. Every other week or so there'll be a new highlight of Omark, the advertising patches on his jersey flapping in the breeze, making some sweet dangle or another and generally looking like Jari Kurri without all that irritating defense stuff. And we'll go "woo" and mentally start penciling him in with Gagner and Eberle on the line that will send us to the Stanley Cup once again.

What a shame that Craig MacTavish isn't still around, so we can't blame him for Omark's inevitable failure.

It's been popular to compare Omark to another great YouTube artist, Rob Schremp, but the comparison doesn't hold water. For one thing, Schremp is bigger. For another thing, at age twenty-three Schremp has recorded 25 points in 44 NHL games with the New York Islanders, while the only-a-few-months-younger Omark is currently on 36 points in 56 KHL games with the Moscow Dynamo.

So, Omark isn't quite as good as Rob Schremp. The guy who drove us all insane until we lost him on waivers. That guy.

This is the second part of a series with an indeterminate number of parts (the first part, Teemu Hartikainen, having come all the way back in December) saying why all those prospects we're hoping will pull our bacon out of the fire actually sort of stink. Omark stinks worse than most of them, and even though we recently ranked him number six on our Top 25 Under 25 I'm not taking that as an endorsement. We are, after all, the worst team in the NHL, so our top 25 under 25 aren't necessarily that good.

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More photos » Frederick Breedon - AP

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The waiver system is something that's reasonably important to understand when we're talking about next year's roster.  It's also good to know which players you need to have signed to an NHL contract by next season (some of them by the entry draft) at the risk of losing negotiating rights.  There is also sometimes confusion about which league players are eligible to play in.  After the jump, I'll take a look at all of the Oiler players in our "Top 25 Under 25" series and talk about where they're eligible to play, whether they're already signed to an NHL contract for next season, whether they need to be and whether or not they need to clear waivers.

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Our top 25 under 25 is done.  We ranked them all, with reason, from Cameron Abney to Bryan Young and everyone in between.  We were called some names along the way and a few of us had our intelligence questioned.  We collectively expose ourselves to the rantings and ravings and questions of our integrity below.  We only agreed on one thing - Sam Gagner.  After that, it got progressively worse, to the point where our 3rd overall player, Jordan Eberle, had the same voting spread as our 15th overall player, Anton Lander.

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The curtain falls on a February that saw the spotlight shift towards a pair of kids that haven't had much positive press since the arrival of Jordan Eberle and Pääjärvi.  Riley Nash and Chris VandeVelde, the pair of erudite centers stormed through February, combining for 22 points in 12 games.  Nash racked up four goals and nine assists in seven games and VandeVelde tallied three goals and six assists in five games.  Nash's NHLE82 jumped from 26 to 38 and VandeVelde's NHLE82 moved from 26 to 32.  

Linus Omark jumped to the top of the equivalency list with a strong month as well, pushing Dynamo Moscow to a 4th place finish and into the KHL playoffs.

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Magnus Paajarvi-Svensson is the best pure prospect in the Edmonton Oilers system. He plays against high-level opposition in the Elitserien. He was one of the best skaters in his draft class; one scout told The Hockey News, "With his ability to get around forwards and the way the game is called now, he’ll draw two minor penalties a game with his outside speed."

His offensive numbers weren’t great in his draft year, a fairly common occurrence for players in Europe. Another scout told THN, "If he were playing junior, maybe he’d have 40 or 50 goals. But he’s playing against men." Fortunately, his numbers have improved dramatically this season.

He has size (6’1", 198lbs), he has skill, and he plays a position (LW) where the Oilers could use an infusion of talent.

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 Jordan Eberle is Clutch. He scores Big Goals. Clutch Goals. Big, Clutch Goals.

Of course the last time the Oilers actually needed a clutch goal was in the spring of 2006 when Eberle was turning 16, but hopefully they'll be needing a few more before he hits his 30s. Team Canada on the other hand could use this guy Today.

Just kidding on that last part, but Eberle has already made quite the name for himself on the international stage with a whole clutch of clutch goals. Over the past three seasons he has represented Canada once in the U-18s and twice in the U-20s, winning gold twice (both under Pat Quinn) and silver once. He finished in the Top 4 scorers each time, sharing the top of the leaderboard with hotshots like John Tavares, James van Riemsdyk, Cody Hodgson, Nikita Filatov, Matt Duchene, and Jordan Schroeder, not to mention fellow future Oilers like Magnus Pääjärvi-Svensson, Teemu Hartikainen, and (ahem) Taylor Hall. (Everything is bright in Oilerland once one learns to ignore the present!)

Nay, nay, the naysayers say, that's just the Tournament of Small Sample Sizes, not to be taken seriously even when the results turn out to be pretty darn reproducible after all. So let's put all that aside and look at his Desjardins NHL Equivalencies, right after the jump.

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