News Article: Friedman: Oilers ‘an organization on edge’

[ThreeOfAPerfectPair]

Friedman: Oilers ‘an organization on edge’

“A couple of years ago, they started looking internally at, ‘Do we run our organization efficiently,’ and they’ve made a lot of changes behind the scenes. The kind of stuff we don’t see on the outside. People in the business side, the people whose work doesn’t necessarily impact the hockey decisions. And it’s put the whole organization on edge. And I think that has continued now over to the hockey side. I know that a lot of us are talking about McLellan, but I think it goes a lot deeper than that. I don’t know too many people that feel that safe there right now.”

“Like I said, I think it’s just about everybody in the hockey ops department,” noted Friedman. “I think the only guy who’s probably 100 percent safe, if that, would probably be Gretzky. But other than that, I think everybody there is looking at it like, ‘This organization has made a lot of off-ice change. It’s not working yet on the ice.’

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[Bryanbryoil]

Verbal diarrhea in type.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

Of course it goes deeper than the coach and GM
Lowe, MacT and Howson, the 3 morons that put the Oilers in this situation...still have pull with Katz
As long as they are a part of this, the team will continue to be a laughing stock

 

[Del Preston]

So nothing has changed since January.

Why the f*** are they keeping the same people around if their jobs are in jeopardy whenever the team loses a game? This should have been dealt with in April-June when every other team was making changes. Does Katz run all his other businesses like this? No.

 

[Soundwave]

Friedman: Oilers ‘an organization on edge’

“A couple of years ago, they started looking internally at, ‘Do we run our organization efficiently,’ and they’ve made a lot of changes behind the scenes. The kind of stuff we don’t see on the outside. People in the business side, the people whose work doesn’t necessarily impact the hockey decisions. And it’s put the whole organization on edge. And I think that has continued now over to the hockey side. I know that a lot of us are talking about McLellan, but I think it goes a lot deeper than that. I don’t know too many people that feel that safe there right now.”

“Like I said, I think it’s just about everybody in the hockey ops department,” noted Friedman. “I think the only guy who’s probably 100 percent safe, if that, would probably be Gretzky. But other than that, I think everybody there is looking at it like, ‘This organization has made a lot of off-ice change. It’s not working yet on the ice.’

I'm shocked that adding Reider and Gravel didn't fix our problems.

 

[Cloned]

I think Nicholson is considered more to be on the business side, so I don’t think he’s in any danger.

It’s legitimately possible though that all of Chia, MacT, Howson, Green, and McLellan could be gone. Same goes for all those “directors of player development” like Carriere and Moores.

 

[lakai17]

How reliable is this Friedman cat?

They have talked lots but still no major moves is all I'm saying.

 

[belair]

Elliotte, nothing has changed in Edmonton. Peter Chiarelli was lipstick on a pig. Same guys who ran the last era of that team are still sitting at the dinner table getting a paycheque every week. The only significant change we've made is in regards to our amateur scouting--and even those guys are full of shit half the time because they buy into the same trends all the other scouts do.

The Oilers were a severely broken team when we got Connor. Teams that lack prospect depth and fail to consistently develop NHL talent struggle to ice competitive teams. The awful part is that I'm worried someone important is going to blame these setbacks solely on Peter Chiarelli and it'll be just his guys who get the boot. Meanwhile, the same guys who are responsible for putting us in the position to draft Connor McDavid will be sitting at that boardroom table easing Bill Scott into the GM chair.

I have no faith in Edmonton's ability to hire the right people to run a sports franchise.

 

[Del Preston]

How reliable is this Friedman cat?

They have talked lots but still no major moves is all I'm saying.

He's very reliable but he also does a lot of speculating on his own, which to be fair is usually him thinking out loud as to what makes the most sense.

 

[Soundwave]

The funny thing is they didn't even have to do anything special. Get the 2015 draft and you're laughing all the way to the bank and set up as a powerhouse for 10 years. Or even get the 2016 draft right and the team is set up well.

You don't need to be a genius to do any of these things. HFboards by committee could have done a better job.

Couldn't do either, then made stupid trades, and here we are. "On edge".

 

[Bryanbryoil]

So nothing has changed since January.

Why the **** are they keeping the same people around if their jobs are in jeopardy whenever the team loses a game? This should have been dealt with in April-June when every other team was making changes. Does Katz run all his other businesses like this? No.

We pissed away all of last season and kept Todd and inexplicably hired 3 new assistants. Now we are in a cluster frak situation where if we add a new HC that he has the "luxury" of having another coaches hand picked assistants. In the meantime the team is sinking, players are not developing up here and instead of making changes we are screwing the pooch again deliberating what to do. There should've been a plan set in stone before the season that outside of an injury to Connor things should've been carried out by now. This flying by the seats of our pants, red wine summits, getting input from guys like MacT, etc. is beyond ridiculous. Let's expect the guys that drove the car into the ditch to suddenly get the car back on the road and win the race with the steering out of alignment, the tires popped off the rims and the radiator smashed into the fan.

 

[belair]

How reliable is this Friedman cat?

They have talked lots but still no major moves is all I'm saying.

He is making up crap to write about at an alarming rate, so unsurprisingly his content has gotten less and less interesting over time as Rogers has expected him to be the 'go-to' guy when it comes to hearsay. He's always been careful to toe the line though. He doesn't claim to be much of an insider. He tends to speculate a lot.

 

[ujju2]

Of course it goes deeper than the coach and GM
Lowe, MacT and Howson, the 3 morons that put the Oilers in this situation...still have pull with Katz
As long as they are a part of this, the team will continue to be a laughing stock

I don't see how MacT and Howson are responsible for this... If anything, their incompetence, which led directly to McDavid, should have served to have this team in a much better position by 2018. And really, MacT didn't really necessarily make the team worse imo. He just was too hesitant to make the moves needed to make the team substantially better. That's not what caused the current situation though. Honestly, I've defended Chiarelli consistently, but at this point I can say that I think Chiarelli has been far worse for us than MacT ever was. Only Chiarelli hired a slightly better coach than MacT did, and that's hidden this fact for a while. Not that TMac is really any good, but he's better than Eakins.

 

[Del Preston]

We pissed away all of last season and kept Todd and inexplicably hired 3 new assistants. Now we are in a cluster frak situation where if we add a new HC that he has the "luxury" of having another coaches hand picked assistants. In the meantime the team is sinking, players are not developing up here and instead of making changes we are screwing the pooch again deliberating what to do. There should've been a plan set in stone before the season that outside of an injury to Connor things should've been carried out by now. This flying by the seats of our pants, red wine summits, getting input from guys like MacT, etc. is beyond ridiculous. Let's expect the guys that drove the car into the ditch to suddenly get the car back on the road and win the race with the steering out of alignment, the tires popped off the rims and the radiator smashed into the fan.

Fourth year with the best player on the planet and the organization is just hoping to make the playoffs. That's not how it's supposed to work. They should be competing for Cups by now but that is so far away from happening.

 

[Soundwave]

Fourth year with the best player on the planet and the organization is just hoping to make the playoffs. That's not how it's supposed to work. They should be competing for Cups by now but that is so far away from happening.

Who could have known that surrounding McDavid with such amazing talent like Lucic, Strome, Benning, Caggiula, Russell, Puljujarvi wouldn't work. Even Sekera and Larsson are nothing great, Steve Staois tier talent.

Crap hockey IQ, crap finishing ability, crap skating, crap creativity, crap passing, crap shot accuracy.

 

[Bryanbryoil]

I don't see how MacT and Howson are responsible for this... If anything, their incompetence, which led directly to McDavid, should have served to have this team in a much better position by 2018. And really, MacT didn't really necessarily make the team worse imo. He just was too hesitant to make the moves needed to make the team substantially better. That's not what caused the current situation though. Honestly, I've defended Chiarelli consistently, but at this point I can say that I think Chiarelli has been far worse for us than MacT ever was. Only Chiarelli hired a slightly better coach than MacT did, and that's hidden this fact for a while. Not that TMac is really any good, but he's better than Eakins.

Pouliot, Fayne, Nikitin, almost landing Clarkson, Krueger via Skype, hiring and not budging on firing Eakins, etc. Those guys did their dirtiest before Chia came on board just like whoever comes after Chia will have to clean up his mess.

 

[Bryanbryoil]

Who could have known that surrounding McDavid with such amazing talent like Lucic, Strome, Benning, Caggiula, Russell, Puljujarvi wouldn't work. Even Sekera and Larsson are nothing great, Steve Staois tier talent.

Crap hockey IQ, crap finishing ability, crap skating, crap creativity, crap passing, crap shot accuracy.

I just don't understand why the coach gets a free pass from you. I get why you have a big beef with Chia, but Todd has done nothing to warrant a vote of confidence here.

 

[belair]

I don't see how MacT and Howson are responsible for this... If anything, their incompetence, which led directly to McDavid, should have served to have this team in a much better position by 2018. And really, MacT didn't really necessarily make the team worse imo. He just was too hesitant to make the moves needed to make the team substantially better. That's not what caused the current situation though. Honestly, I've defended Chiarelli consistently, but at this point I can say that I think Chiarelli has been far worse for us than MacT ever was. Only Chiarelli hired a slightly better coach than MacT did, and that's hidden this fact for a while. Not that TMac is really any good, but he's better than Eakins.

Go back to 2015. Look at the cap situation, defense and prospect situation. Tell me MacT didn't make the team worse. 'Scorched Earth' is how I'd describe the Oilers prospect cabinet at that point in time--especially when you consider Klefbom was already an NHLer and Nurse was just breaking in.

Teams pushing the cap limit require ELCs to keep their payroll controlled. There's a reason why guys like Matthew Benning and Drake Caggiula were cast into NHL roles immediately out of college.

 

[Porkleaker]

Friedman speculates and I've always considered him to be a moron.

 

[Bryanbryoil]

Go back to 2015. Look at the cap situation, defense and prospect situation. Tell me MacT didn't make the team worse. 'Scorched Earth' is how I'd describe the Oilers prospect cabinet at that point in time--especially when you consider Klefbom was already an NHLer and Nurse was just breaking in.

Teams pushing the cap limit require ELCs to keep their payroll controlled. There's a reason why guys like Matthew Benning and Drake Caggiula were cast into NHL roles immediately out of college.

If there is one positive thing that has happened during Chia's tenure it's that he has stocked the farm team. This is why I have some hope for the future even though this season is looking more and more like another write off especially with it taking entirely too ****ing long to make a coaching change.

 

[Drivesaitl]

Still think its indescribably stupid for the org to have gone with the Boston model, and Chia hire. We already knew with Ference's alignment with Eakins what an errant crap show the Boston Strong philosophy was. Really it just seemed a new way to be myopic regarding players and assets. There is absolutely no way after the Seguin fiasco particularly and the outed videos of the bruins conferences that Chia should have been hired.

In short only an idiot would hire this idiot. The guy was an imposter, and I said as much. Just like I said with eakins, and asshats like Ference. Really I rue the day that Boston managed to win a cup edging Vancouver in the most unlikely SCF since 2006. Without that I doubt we'd have gone so far in this stupid direction. The Boston view on players tended to be as hateful as the MacT/Lowe version. Really hardly any other org in the league is so confrontational and negative re: players. We hired the one GM that I feared the org would go get. We continued to hitch our wagon to outlier dinosaurs that have contempt for pro players.

Nicholson should be fired into space for everything he's done here. What a f***ing clown.

 

[Soundwave]

Go back to 2015. Look at the cap situation, defense and prospect situation. Tell me MacT didn't make the team worse. 'Scorched Earth' is how I'd describe the Oilers prospect cabinet at that point in time--especially when you consider Klefbom was already an NHLer and Nurse was just breaking in.

Teams pushing the cap limit require ELCs to keep their payroll controlled. There's a reason why guys like Matthew Benning and Drake Caggiula were cast into NHL roles immediately out of college.

Because they didn't take Matt Barzal or Chabot or Sergachev or DeBrincat or Aho when they had a clear oppurtunity to do so?

If this team makes a decent pick in the 2015 or 2016 draft, a lot of the "oh noez, we have to rely on Caggiula and Benning" stuff goes right out the window.

 

[frag2]

Fourth year with the best player on the planet and the organization is just hoping to make the playoffs. That's not how it's supposed to work. They should be competing for Cups by now but that is so far away from happening.

Like I said last season, Chiarelli likely thinks having McDavid equates to automatic playoffs so why try?

 

[Bryanbryoil]

Because they didn't take Matt Barzal or Chabot or Sergachev or DeBrincat when they had a clear oppurtunity to do so?

If this team makes a decent pick in the 2015 or 2016 draft, a lot of the "oh noez, we have to rely on Caggiula and Benning" stuff goes right out the window.

That depends on how much Captain Koala would've ****ed their development.

 

[Bryanbryoil]

Like I said last season, Chiarelli likely thinks having McDavid equates to automatic playoffs so why try?

I can't see someone being that lazy in such a situation. If that is the case he should be turfed. I personally think that Chia wanted Todd gone but MacT vouched for him to stay. Other than Katz being a tight wad, why else would Todd still be here?