#FIRECHIA

[CantHaveTkachev]

Imma be straight up and blunt.
Do you blame us?
What optimism do you see in this team?
We had a decade of garbage play, followed by one really good year and back to garbage.
What seems like the outlier? Our start this year or our play last year?

Do you see this team turning around? If so why and what makes you feel that way other than HOPE?

Talbot needs to recover and he the guy he was the past 2 seasons
Klefbom needs to get much better
PK can't be 31st in the league...inexcusable
PP needs to be top 10 in the league...cause they have the exact same players as last year when they finished top 10

its MORE than doable and they have the pieces in place...despite the Chicken Little's out there

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

2007-08 and 2008-09 Oilers teams were pretty solid. Just missed the playoffs in both years.

2011-12 and 2012-13 Oilers were trending in the right direction. Renney and Krueger were both fired far too soon. Tambo wasn't great, but his results were looking better than where Chia is right now.

Bottom line is this team would be middle of the pack compared to the ten teams in the decade of darkness. This team is worse than the four seasons I mentioned, clearly better than four first overall draft seasons with the other two seasons being debateable (06-07 and 11-12). The Oilers ended up in the low 70 some points those two years. If the Oilers go 34-34-1 the rest of this season they end up with 78 points

really? how many playoff teams did we have with "Mr. Dithers" Tambo as GM?
he was brutal, only MacT was worse

I can't believe people think Tambo was better than Chia lol

 

[Little Fury]

he had 50 points last season

So did Eberle and people still ran him out of town.

 

[Little Fury]

Talbot needs to recover and he the guy he was the past 2 seasons
Klefbom needs to get much better
PK can't be 31st in the league...inexcusable
PP needs to be top 10 in the league...cause they have the exact same players as last year when they finished top 10

its MORE than doable and they have the pieces in place...despite the Chicken Little's out there

The issue is they are running out of runway.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

So did Eberle and people still ran him out of town.

so? Lucic wasn't a "dud" signing last year, despite what you said

 

[Soundwave]

Talbot needs to recover and he the guy he was the past 2 seasons
Klefbom needs to get much better
PK can't be 31st in the league...inexcusable
PP needs to be top 10 in the league...cause they have the exact same players as last year when they finished top 10

its MORE than doable and they have the pieces in place...despite the Chicken Little's out there

PP has limited talent on it and it's easy to scout and see the only Oiler who shoots the puck is Letestu. Take that away and the PP falls apart.

Klefbom is just regressing, don't see it turning this year, it's a classic thing that happens to many young players. He got full of himself and thought it would be easy this year. Hopefully he learns his lesson this year.

PK is in trouble until Sekera comes back ... which still seems to be 3-4 weeks out.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

The issue is they are running out of runway.

obviously but not impossible

 

[nabob]

No we are blaming Chia for not doing his job.

Our bottom6 has always been lackluster I have no clue what you're talking about there. JJ was a decent gamble to be fair.
We're missing one of our best dmen to an ACL injury and we sign Avitu to replace him
And we have lacked secondary scoring since the Hall trade and there has been zero attempt to improve it.

We are also blaming Chia for losing value on trades and handing out depth crippling contracts.

It's called accountability

Thanks for not addressing anything in my post. No clue why you even quoted me if you were just going to go off on a rant.

 

[nabob]

or the PK being an absolute embarassment
or the PP being awful despite having the exact same personnel as last year

None of those things were broken last year with the same personnel. No need for Chia to make huge changes to fix anything that wasn't broken.

Fans wanted Sekera off the PP all year last season. Now he's off the PP because he's hurt and our PP isn't working. Maybe all these fans yelling on the internet really don't have a clue about what they're talking about.

 

[Jimmi McJenkins]

PK is in trouble until Sekera comes back ... which still seems to be 3-4 weeks out.

Better then 3 or 4 months. The PK is in trouble until they figure out what their doing out there.

It's not like the spent the summer forgetting how to kill penalties.

 

[Soundwave]

None of those things were broken last year with the same personnel. No need for Chia to make huge changes to fix anything that wasn't broken.

Fans wanted Sekera off the PP all year last season. Now he's off the PP because he's hurt and our PP isn't working. Maybe all these fans yelling on the internet really don't have a clue about what they're talking about.

Unfortunately those things are easy to scout because the Oilers have very little dangerous offensive depth.

You can study their PP and see that they are using a 4th liner as their triggerman. That's easy to disrupt/take away. That ain't Alex Ovechkin, every team has a guy capable of nullifying a Letestu.

It's a one line team and a one trick pony on the PP.

 

[Soundwave]

Better then 3 or 4 months. The PK is in trouble until they figure out what their doing out there.

It's not like the spent the summer forgetting how to kill penalties.

No Sekera and Klefbom reverting into Fayne are significant losses to the PK.

 

[CycloneSweep]

Talbot needs to recover and he the guy he was the past 2 seasons
Klefbom needs to get much better
PK can't be 31st in the league...inexcusable
PP needs to be top 10 in the league...cause they have the exact same players as last year when they finished top 10

its MORE than doable and they have the pieces in place...despite the Chicken Little's out there

Chicken littles? Just as many Kool-Aid drinkers like you.

Our PK has been bad for almost a full year. That's not something that's owing to get better anytime soon. We started good last year and then Hendricks got hurt and we sent Lander down.

Our PP can improve for sure.

We are scoring 1 less goal a game than last year and are allowing 1 more a game. This isn't a team that has one fixable issue.

We can't score, we have the worst special teams in the league, our goaltending hasn't been good and our "best" defensemen has been bad enough where he would be sat nightly if it wasn't Klefbom.

The Islanders top 4 forwards have more points than all of our forwards combined for example.

This isn't people saying the sky is falling with nothing to be worried about. This team is rotten right now. There are chunks of ceiling falling and people saying it is and people pile you are saying "Nah it's fine".

Show me something good other than shots on goal. Anything. You can't.

 

[Little Fury]

so? Lucic wasn't a "dud" signing last year, despite what you said

He was a non-factor outside of the PP, which of course has some value, but that's not where we need him to produce (and he's been bumped from that already this year). And so far he's been part of the problem as far as the whole secondary scoring issue goes (on pace for 37 points). But it's not just a question of production. He's slow, he's not winning battles, he's flubbing passes, whiffing on chances and indifferent to backchecking. In short, he's all the things that Eberle got castigated for last season but older and with a worse contract. But hey, he fights fourth liners, so I guess he's beyond reproach.

 

[Little Fury]

Better then 3 or 4 months. The PK is in trouble until they figure out what their doing out there.

It's not like the spent the summer forgetting how to kill penalties.

They dumped one of their best PKers for nothing (well, technically they're still paying him, but you get the drift).

 

[belair]

I'm just going to respond to these two since the rest of this thread seems to be 'my team is losing so I'll just bitch about this deal and that deal...' These two posts got the gist...

You mean the team that is currently where teams go when they want to recover from a big loss? Or opposing goalies love to play to pad their stats?

Yeah we don't get pushed around or beat up anymore on top of losing. Now we just lose

That’s great but the team still can’t score and you can’t win if you can’t find the back of the net. Last year they relied heavily on the top line and talbot. Nothing has changed in terms of the rest producing except now talbot has been average to terrible.

Yes this team. The team that put up the franchise's best regular season record since 1986-87 and had the best playoff finish since 2005-06. That--again--was 13 games ago. We were very fortunate last season--had some career years and avoided significant injuries. Every team is at risk for them so I fail to see the point of using it as a criticism. Show me a backup plan in the instance of a McDavid injury, fans-so-eager to rid themselves of RNH's ludicrous contract... Or maybe a Talbot injury.

We were hardly a perfect team last year. We were very young and inexperienced when it counted and it showed. The group is still there though and as I've posted in previous threads...we lost a lot of these games last year as well. The majority of opponents we've faced...we did not fare well against.

I'm not convinced we'll continue to struggle. We haven't been dominated by opponents like in many previous seasons. We've lost a lot of games where we seemingly should've won.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

PP has limited talent on it and it's easy to scout and see the only Oiler who shoots the puck is Letestu. Take that away and the PP falls apart.

only 2 top-10 scorers last year

didn't affect them much last year finishing top 10

Klefbom is just regressing, don't see it turning this year, it's a classic thing that happens to many young players. He got full of himself and thought it would be easy this year. Hopefully he learns his lesson this year.

PK is in trouble until Sekera comes back ... which still seems to be 3-4 weeks out.

no PK is in trouble as long as Talbot can't stop pucks

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

Chicken littles? Just as many Kool-Aid drinkers like you.

Our PK has been bad for almost a full year. That's not something that's owing to get better anytime soon. We started good last year and then Hendricks got hurt and we sent Lander down.

Our PP can improve for sure.

We are scoring 1 less goal a game than last year and are allowing 1 more a game. This isn't a team that has one fixable issue.

We can't score, we have the worst special teams in the league, our goaltending hasn't been good and our "best" defensemen has been bad enough where he would be sat nightly if it wasn't Klefbom.

The Islanders top 4 forwards have more points than all of our forwards combined for example.

This isn't people saying the sky is falling with nothing to be worried about. This team is rotten right now. There are chunks of ceiling falling and people saying it is and people pile you are saying "Nah it's fine".

Show me something good other than shots on goal. Anything. You can't.

my point is they have the personnel in the room to get the job done...they did it last year, there NO REASON why they can't get it done going forward

downgrading from Eberle to Strome is not the reason why we're 4-8-1

 

[Soundwave]

only 2 top-10 scorers last year

didn't affect them much last year finishing top 10


no PK is in trouble as long as Talbot can't stop pucks

PP has two very good players, unfortunately neither is really a high end shot as such you know they have to pass the puck to score. So you study who they pass to and voila, you can make their PP fall apart.

Oilers are an easy team to play against. If you can weather a few McDavid storms and capitalize on stupid mistakes by the D to grab a lead, it's a fairly easy win. Simply clog the middle of the ice the rest of the game and you win.

There is no one you really have to worry about on this team aside from the top line. Teams have zero respect for anyone else on this team, they're fine with RNH getting the odd goal, but generally lines 2-4 on this team and the d-corps are weak threats and are not going to beat you. You don't have to sweat them.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

He was a non-factor outside of the PP, which of course has some value, but that's not where we need him to produce (and he's been bumped from that already this year). And so far he's been part of the problem as far as the whole secondary scoring issue goes (on pace for 37 points). But it's not just a question of production. He's slow, he's not winning battles, he's flubbing passes, whiffing on chances and indifferent to backchecking. In short, he's all the things that Eberle got castigated for last season but older and with a worse contract. But hey, he fights fourth liners, so I guess he's beyond reproach.

ok, so 13 games into the season after a season where he put up 50 (I don't care where they came from, he still scored 50 points) means he's the biggest dud signing? really?

 

[Little Fury]

ok, so 13 games into the season after a season where he put up 50 (I don't care where they came from, he still scored 50 points) means he's the biggest dud signing? really?

I guess if you ignore the context for the numbers and the actual on-ice performance, he's great.

 

[shoop]

really? how many playoff teams did we have with "Mr. Dithers" Tambo as GM?
he was brutal, only MacT was worse

I can't believe people think Tambo was better than Chia lol

Why does trending in the right direction have to mean making the playoffs? I was replying to someone saying this team is better than every team during the decade of darkness. tbh the current team would be middle of the pack compared to those teams.

The move from Tambo/Krueger to MacTavish/Eakins was undeniably a step in the wrong direction.

I think playoffs aren't going to happen for the Oilers this season. If Chia and McLellan can finish with 80 some points and be competitive into March then they deserve another season.

 

[belair]

Except last year's team needed a perfect storm of perfect health and McDavid/Talbot going supernova to end up where it did. Chia took a team that caught all the breaks and downgraded the roster significantly, leaving no safety net should luck turn against them (which it has). Now, I don't think they are as bad as their record (anymore than they were as good as their record last season), but the flaws were there.

Define a safety net. Explain how Chiarelli could've built a fall back for key injuries. Like McDavid, Draisaitl, Talbot, Klefbom, Larsson...

But remember....we need to have cap space over the summer in the instance that Draisaitl negotiations go south and the offer-sheet threat becomes real. Also, keep the payroll nice and low throughout the season, because we're going to want space for potential bonuses and also the ability to load up in the instance that our guys somehow duplicate that aberration of a season last season...

And did McDavid go supernova last year? I'm under the impression he IS supernova.

 

[Little Fury]

my point is they have the personnel in the room to get the job done...they did it last year, there NO REASON why they can't get it done going forward

downgrading from Eberle to Strome is not the reason why we're 4-8-1

No, there's lots of reasons. Bad luck, Sekera injury, uneven performance from Talbot, no secondary scoring, poor special teams. You can't do much about luck, but a lot of the other issues are down to roster makeup and deployment.

 

[Soundwave]

I'm fairly sure at game 13 of their "regression" years, Calgary, Colorado, Florida were all also saying the same "but we were one game away from the second/third round just a few months ago, this can't be happening".

Oh it can and does happen.

This happens to young teams a lot. Oilers are a thin team with little offensive creativity outside of two players.