Are the oilers just a poorly built team?

[pcruz]

I think the franchise has suffered enough.
Maybe the NHL should help them out by offering them guaranteed 1st overall draft selections in the next 2 drafts.
Honestly, what team can re-build from being one of the worst in the league for only a decade and not have any really good young players chomping at the bit to contribute.

It's just so unfair what's happened to this franchise.

 

[MasterDecoy]

To give Lucic and Draisitl monster contracts. And because this team cannot draft and develop defencemen for the life of them.
Edmonton is the poster child for failure for defensemen development. Not 1 top pairing d-man drafted in 25 years.

habs can't develop centers
other teams have that same kind of problems as well, but i don't want to start a food fight so ill just trash my own team

as an aside, i find it fascinating that some orgs have almost built in deficiencies in drafting and developing players of a certain position

 

[pcruz]

habs can't develop centers
other teams have that same kind of problems as well, but i don't want to start a food fight so ill just trash my own team

as an aside, i find it fascinating that some orgs have almost built in deficiencies in drafting and developing players of a certain position

To be totally honest, until Matthews, the Leafs haven't been able to develop a very good to star centre since......I can't remember off the top of my head.
Also, outside of Rielly (who I like very much but don't believe he's a true #1 guy), the last defenseman we've developed who was actually really good was Kaberle.
I can't remember the last really good goalie we've developed either (I can't remember if Potvin was a Toronto pick and I'm too lazy to check).

Thinking back, this team has been utterly dreadful at drafting and developing talent all over the ice. We've had to acquire almost all of the talent from other teams.
It's rather depressing.


Thanks for that!

 

[t0nedeff]

Not convinced badly coached? absolutely I don't know what the benchmark is for seeing something fail and not changing it but Mclellan is 1 if not the worst offender when it comes to that. The guy has no idea what playing to players strengths is.

 

[Bleedred]

Not convinced badly coached? absolutely I don't know what the benchmark is for seeing something fail and not changing it but Mclellan is 1 if not the worst offender when it comes to that. The guy has no idea what playing to players strengths is.

He's always been a mediocre head coach at the very best. And calling him mediocre is a compliment.

He rode the coattails of a prime Marleau and Thornton. Now he's got McDavid to ride and the results haven't even been that great.

And he even managed to miss the playoffs with a full season of McDavid.

And when he first got his start, he rode Babcock's coattails and a very strong Wings team as their assistant. Guy is worthless. I tried to convince the Sharks faithful of this for years and most were also in agreement, but he also had a small but vocal following.