Oil Kings GM Kirt Hill & Oilers Goaltender Calvin Pickard (5/7/25)

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Oilers NOW with Bob Stauffer 19 min 4 speakers 4 chapters transcribed 25 days ago

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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What announcements and sponsor messages open the Oilers Now episode?

Bob Stauffer 0:00

Hey, it's Bob Stoffer. I just wanted to let you know that you can listen to Oilers Now ad free on Amazon Music, included with Prime. We return to Oilers Now with Bob Stoffer. Brought to you by World of Spas, Edmonton's number one hot tub and swim spa dealer. The ideal place to start your daily vacation on Oilers Radio 8. AD Chad. Bob Stoffer joining you. T-Mobile Arena. Calvin Pickard coming up at 545. But we're going to get a quick update on the Western Hockey League WHL Banham Draft. We go off to the River Creek Resort and Casino hotline, and we welcome back to the show, Edmonton Oil Kings GM Kurt Hill, live from the Banham Draft. Kurt's got, at least right now, I think he I think he's made his pick at number two, but he's also got the eighth overall pick.

Bob Stauffer 0:47

Kelowna just uh added a couple assets in a trade for Regina. Regina moved up to three. Kurt Hill, how you doing? Doing good Bob. How are you? Good. Tell us about who you took number two overall.

Kirt Hill 0:58

Yeah, number two we took Holden Waters, uh obviously a big ranky defenseman. You know, we see a lot of similarities into in his game that uh Caden Gooley had when he was in the league and when he was an oil king. So uh obviously uh a big right shot D athletic guy who's gonna, you know, probably top out at six four and you know be able to play significant minutes and add both defensively and offensively. So super excited to add a you know a huge piece to our franchise.

Bob Stauffer 1:24

All right, so Maddox Schultz, no surprise. A lot of people think he's gonna go number one in his NHL draft year. He's had an unreal go. Uh he's gonna stay hometown Regina. Then Regina traded into the number three spot. Kelowna traded down, gave up uh Regina gave up number ones in twenty six and twenty-seven. Probably future assets for Kelowna because they have the Memorial Cup. So Regina's made the pick. You're sitting there at eight as it stands right now. Can you trade up higher or are you? likely to hold at eight.

Kirt Hill 1:52

Yeah, there's some things kinda mixing around here but um yeah we'll see. I think we like eight uh right now the way the board's kinda going and uh you know, we think we're gonna be able to add another uh real significant player here to the future of the team.

Bob Stauffer 2:04

Kurt, uh, the Medicine Hat Tigers are in the WHL final, they're taking on the Spokane Chiefs. Medicine Hat, uh, Calgary, and Lethbridge all loaded up. A little bit of a rebuild year for Red Deer. Your team took a real big step forward, uh, made the playoffs, and had the number two and number eight overall pick.

How did Oil Kings GM Kurt Hill evaluate the WHL Banham Draft picks?

Bob Stauffer 2:21

This is almost an ideal scenario, other than the fact that you made a coaching change, but this is uh this is a decent scenario. You must have a lot of assets.

Kirt Hill 2:34

Oh the uh the cupboards are full and the assets are good and our prospect pool's great and um yeah, this uh a huge draft. We got number eight, we got two seconds and uh um we also picked third overall in the US draft tomorrow. So uh yeah, this could be um a a huge couple of days here for for the future of the Oil Kings and uh yeah, I think it's um there's a lot of really good things to come here for a lot of years for uh Oil Kings fans.

Bob Stauffer 2:57

Any concern about uh N C double A uh going after and g and grabbing players at seventeen, eighteen and nineteen. It's interesting. I heard there were some guys wavering on that maybe three weeks ago. Now more likely to return to major junior in their draft years. But uh we all know that you're gonna lose some nineteen and twenty year olds. Any concern about it being earlier?

Kirt Hill 3:17

You know, right now I don't think uh we're we're concerned. I mean I guess you you can't be naive to it. I guess you get a phone call any day, but uh you know, as an organization we just gotta be keep doing the right things here and we gotta just keep developing, you know, future first round NHL picks like Fiddler and um you know, obviously Soption's gonna be an NHL pick this year. So if we keep doing our job on the development side and getting guys to the next level, uh this is gonna be a destination where kids are gonna wanna stay.

Bob Stauffer 3:40

How close are you to finding a head coach?