Initially a prospect of the Anaheim Ducks, drafted 43rd overall in 2008. Justin Schultz had 91 points in 108 games played for the West Kelowna Warriors in the British Columbia Hockey League. Schultz followed this up with 113 points in 121 games played for the University of Wisconsin in the Western College Hockey Association. Schultz was also named Defensive Player of the Year in 2011 and 2012. Top right-handed defensemen with offensive upside don’t grow on trees in the NHL, and boy, did this one ever look like a banger. But he had no desire to re-sign with Anaheim, so he became an unrestricted free agent in the 2012 offseason. While I’ve always disagreed with the decision by the Oilers to use the first overall pick that year on Nail Yakupov, adding to the absurd overabundance of skilled forwards the team already had, the decision to sign Schultz looked like a good way to balance that out in hindsight.
2013 was the year of the lockout-shortened season. Like all the other young Oilers at that time, Schultz spent the last few months of 2012 playing in the AHL. He led all AHL defensemen in points with 48 despite only playing 34 games and was named AHL Defenseman of the Year. In mid-January, NHL hockey was finally back, and Schultz would finish his first NHL season with eight goals and 19 assists for 27 points in all 48 games played, good for seventh in rookie scoring. The 2014 season saw a slight increase in production with 11 goals and 22 assists for 33 points in 74 games played, while 2015 saw a slight drop off with six goals and 25 assists for 31 points in 81 games played. Schultz became a whipping boy in Edmonton and a face of the Dallas Eakins era Oilers. His offense was okay but not great for the type of player he was supposed to be. And he was a liability when it came to playing defense. So much so that the term “Jultzing” had been coined around by the Oilers fan base.
The act of leaning your body and holding your stick with one hand being a way of retrieving the puck without the possibility of making body contact. Despite the defensive deficiencies, not just by him but by other Oilers players as well, it was expected that at least the powerplay and other offensive aspects of the game would be improved by the team. But aside from 2013, when their powerplay was 7th in the league, it kept finishing in the bottom ten the next couple of years, as well as their Goals For total. This fact did not help at a time when this team was allowing five or six goals every game. If you’re sharing offensive situations with Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, it’s your job as an offensive defenseman to improve the goals for department, not add to its woes. Basically, he did not develop into what we’re seeing Evan Bouchard develop into. 30-ish points by a defenseman isn’t terrible at all, but it can also be argued that it was easier to get some of those points after November when the team kept playing month after month of last-place hockey with no real pressure to win games anymore.
The Oilers started the 2015 offseason by hiring Todd McLellan as their sixth Head Coach in six years. While the constant carousel of coaches in Edmonton was an eye roll, the team performed well on the ice in his first season behind their bench in 2016, despite having a roster plagued with countless injuries and ultimately finishing at the bottom of the standings again. But despite that improved play by most players on the team, Schultz was still sticking out like a sore thumb, undoubtedly playing his worst season in orange and blue silks with just a minuscule 10 points in 45 games. We had slowly watched who was once a really promising prospect descend into Young Oilers Hell. In hopes that he could rebound after two very rough years, it became more evident that a fresh start was necessary. Schultz was traded to the Penguins a couple of days before the Trade Deadline in exchange for a third round pick.
Just a week ago, I got into a minor discussion on Twitter with a fellow Oilers fan. It was about former players from those decade of darkness rosters. Let me say that it is okay to debate other sports fans about the games we are passionate about. Just so long as those debates do not resort to swearing or name-calling. Let’s all conduct ourselves more professionally than that. The defense for Justin Schultz’s time in Edmonton was his back-to-back Stanley Cup wins after the trade. I don’t deny that Schultz was excellent in Pittsburgh, especially in the 2017 Playoffs when he was coming off a 51 point regular season, and Kris Letang missed the entire postseason due to injury. And he’s now playing solid hockey for the second year Seattle Kraken. But watching former players benefit from a change of scenery doesn’t erase what they did, or in this case, didn’t do on their initial teams. They needed the change of scenery for a reason. I think it’s too often that we use the fresh start to justify keeping a struggling player and forget entirely that they were struggling. Every team has had this predicament before. The Oilers have just gone through it a hysterical amount of times in comparison to other groups. There are players from the Decade Of Darkness that I was, and occasionally still am, adamant about defending. Just two weeks ago, I wrote an article stating why I don’t share the same feelings as other Oilers fans about Dustin Penner’s time in Edmonton. But sometimes, circumstances change, and a player just might not be a good fit for the team anymore moving forward; it happens.
Me looking back at Justin Schultz’s career through this article is also why the notion that the pre-McDavid Oilers “would never draft defensemen” is a tad misguided. They had lots of younger defensemen but needed older defensemen who were good enough to take on top minutes. I’m happy that he got better after moving on. Maybe it was the added pressure of playing in a Canadian market halfway through what used to be the NHL’s longest playoff drought. Maybe it was then General Manager Craig MacTavish claiming he had Norris Trophy potential before he’d even played a single NHL game yet. Perhaps he needed a decent veteran partner to show him the way. Or maybe he was just another hindered casualty of the Dallas Eakins effect. Whatever it was, just celebrate the Schultz of today, not the Jultz of yesteryear.
