Despite being incredibly busy on Canada Day Steve Tambellini decided not to defer his vacation day to today and instead got right back to work getting Theo Peckham's name on a new one year deal. As usual the Oilers did not include the terms of the deal with the announcment of the deal. Update: According to Ryan Rishaug the contract is worth $1.075M.
With just a single NHL season under his belt, it's not surprising that the two sides opted for a one year deal. There is no real risk in a one year deal for either side and this same time next year everyone involved will probably have a better idea exactly what what Peckham brings the Oilers and what that player is truly worth.
While we don't know exactly how good Peckham will turn out to be we do know this, he's a defensive defenseman, a meat and potatoes kind of player if you will. He's not going to provide much offensively (three goals and ten assists last season) but what he brings instead is a big body that he's more than willing to throw around. Not surprisingly he's also willing to drop his gloves from time to time. That is the kind of blue collar work ethic can make an average player very popular in this town.
Aside from effort there are warts to Peckham's game though. The scoring chance data that Derek has provided identifies a potentially alarming pattern, almost every Oiler player did better without Peckham than with Peckham. In his defense he was a rookie (not by the NHL definition but by a logical one) playing on a bad team. It's not unexpected that a player would struggle in a situation like that but it's also why Peckham is nothing more than a 5/6 defenseman at this point. If Peckham is more than a bottom pairing defenseman then we should see the scoring chance data start to trend up this season as Peckham plays his second full season with the club.
Last season Peckham made $550k, the lowest of all the Oilers regular blueliners. He will certainly get a raise over that but even though the Oilers like to overpay everyone I don't think that his raise will push him above $1M. For a bottom pairing defenseman that has issues in his own end and just 102 games to his credit I'm not sure how the Oilers could justify giving him any more but this is a team that seems to want to over pay everyone just because they can so I could be wrong about Peckham's value.
Update: The $1.075M being reported for this deal is a little higher than I would have expected or wanted. Similar to the Smid deal this is an over payment but it's not a massive over payment. Yes there is plenty of cap space so this contract isn't a massive problem but sooner or later this team is going to have to sign someone for what they're worth. I find it concerning that the Oilers are willing to over pay anyone with a pulse, especially RFAs where the team has some leverage over the contract value. This is an interesting change from the route taken with Andrew Cogliano last season when the Oilers really used the leverage they had to their advantage after giving much larger contracts to Sam Gagner and Gilbert Brule.