The Oilers have impact players. They just happen to be playing in Newark and Brooklyn.
Hall for Larsson was dumb on paper, but it at least had a small amount of logic to it. Trade winger for high potential defenseman, and then use the freed up money to get another winger. the Strome for Eberle deal however, was completely indefensible. Trade a winger (who admittedly came off a pretty blah year) for a crappier, more fragile winger who never even had a career high near Eberle. Good job.
Look at Milbury's worst trades. Now look at Chiarelli's in Edmonton. Chiarelli isn't there yet, but his bottom 3 are definitely competitive.
Chiarelli sucks definitely. No argument from me there. But to put the state of the team all on him and McLellan to me is just lazy. It goes deeper than that. They're incompetent boobs following a long line of incompetent boobs, most of which are somehow still getting paid to sip red wine in the owner's box of an 800 million dollar new arena.
To me it all started with one idea, "
Let's lose on purpose."
Not really the most honorable notion, and personally I detest that this attitude is so prevalent in pro sports, but they're not the first or the last to adopt this strategy under the guise of "rebuilding". Just seems like they never had a step 2 and didn't fully appreciate the ramifications of what this idea might mean to an organization, how accepting failure is not a good environment for young players to brought into.
Step 1 - Lose a lot and draft high to acquire talent
Step 2- Throw that talent into the lineup with little to no quality veteran support around them
Step 3- ???????????????
Step 4- Profit anyways because the fans love their team religiously
Entering a rebuild is fine, but at some point you need to have a viable plan on how you're going to get out of it. This idea that a dynasty is just going to appear before your eyes because "Well, but, we've SUFFERED!! WE DESERVE IT!!" is wishful thinking at it's finest. The Penguins did largely the same thing but look at the roster Crosby won his first cup with. Tons of quality vets. Look at the roster McDavid is working with, over half is replacement level filler.