The fact is Chiarelli inherited a mess. He inherited very few players with significant value and even fewer guys that you could win with. The rest of the roster and prospects were junk. There were only 3 players with much value at all: McDavid, Draisaitl, Hall and Hall was the obvious guy to trade because the losing culture compromised him as a guy you can win with. Everyone agreed Hall made the most sense to trade away. The Larson trade wasn’t bad at all because the Oilers weren’t trading a 90 point player away they were trading a 60 point guy with question marks about his character. The defense was a huge black hole of talent that Chiarelli had to inherit. Eberle had marginal value and was no big loss not even sure why you mention him. The Lucic signing was a good signing at the time, no one could’ve reasonably predicted that he would decline this much this fast. He was exactly the kind of player the Oilers needed and you don’t get those players except by drafting them which isn’t possible because the Oilers drafting and scouting has achieved some of the worst results in the league over the last decade or so. There’s no guarantee that the draft picks he traded for G Reinhart would have become good players either, people always overrate draft picks on this site, and Griffin was a good target because he fit the exact profile of what the Oilers need and if he broke out in the NHL he wouldn’t have been available after that. On top of all of this the Oilers have run into a ridiculous number of injuries that compounds the problem that Chiarelli inherited a mess. I understand the city of Edmonton needs a scapegoat and they look like they have chosen Peter Chiarelli but I’m just calling it like I see it - he’s a scapegoat. He’s a good GM who is taking the fall for extremely poor results at the draft table stretching back for over a decade before he was even hired and terrible injury luck that’s the result of having one of the least favourable travel schedules in the NHL which is also totally unfair.
