Ken Holland Appreciation Thread

[Cloned]

Oilers winning a trade....this feels weird. On a related note, had this been offered to Chiarelli he would hung up and blocked treliving.

Nah, he would have added a 1st round pick.

 

[I am the Liquor]

Ya, f*** this guy.

Do nothing off season is paying off dividends.

 

[KeithIsActuallyBad]

I’m super happy we rehired Tambellini.

 

[XXIV97]

Ya, **** this guy.

Do nothing off season is paying off dividends.

What type of moves were you expecting? In order to make a trade, you have to have valuable assets that are in demand. The only players on the Oilers roster that have positive value are McDavid, Draisaitl, Nugent-Hopkins, Larsson, Nurse, and Klefbom. There are roster players such as Kassian who have negligible positive value. You may be able to trade prospects for quality player; however, the Oilers did not have enough cap space to execute a trade like this. Therefore, Holland would have to trade a top four D for a top six player when there is a short age in both categories

Ken Holland had zero options this past season to create moves. I would give him at least next offseason before discrediting him.

 

[DingerMcSlapshot]

Ken Holland way over rated.

 

[redgrant]

Holland has zero flexibility right now. He got rid of Lucic which is amazing as is.

This season when he decides what to do with cap space and a lot of garbage contracts gone is his real test.

 

[Verdadplus]

Holland is another abject incompetent
Waive and trade 3/4 of the rosrer

 

[Aceboogie]

Guy is Tambo 2.0

Hated the hire then, hate it now, will always hate in

Bring in progressive thinkers

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

Guy is Tambo 2.0

Hated the hire then, hate it now, will always hate in

Bring in progressive thinkers

huh? why?

 

[Soundwave]

Neal trade was great, Haas find was OK, but it was always clear he had more work to do. The GM must find this team a fast line driver for the 2nd line to alleviate how much pressure is put on McDavid/Draisaitl, we've known that for years.

 

[space321]

Just look at what's left in Detroit... that's where we're heading except without Cups and no Lidstrom to carry our defense.

 

[Soundwave]

Just look at what's left in Detroit... that's where we're heading except without Cups and no Lidstrom to carry our defense.

I mean if you gave McDavid and Draisaitl and Nurse/Klef/Bear, a Larkin, Mantha, Athansiou, Green, to play with ... you'd probably have one heckuva squad.

The issue is we don't have like 5-6 years to wait to get those support pieces.

 

[DaGap]

Appreciation? LOL FML

 

[space321]

I mean if you gave McDavid and Draisaitl and Nurse/Klef/Bear, a Larkin, Mantha, Athansiou, Green, to play with ... you'd probably have one heckuva squad.

The issue is we don't have like 5-6 years to wait to get those support pieces.

Well yah, if you add McDavid and Draisaitl to any team with a bunch of youngsters who are victims of unsheltered top line ice time...

Basically if the Oilers had any semi-reliable 2nd line (ie. like 2 more RNH level players) then we'd be f***ing ripping teams apart.

But what I also meant by my first comment was the albatross contracts he handed out to guys like Abdelkader, Nielsen, Ericsson, DeKeyser...

 

[Smartguy]

Appreciation? LOL FML

What did you want him to do in the one offseason he’s had in which he was handed an absolute **** show? He turned Lucic into something useful, he took a shot at addressing the bottom six and was smart enough to only give them all 1 year contracts so he can fix it if he has to. Taking a 1 year shot on Smith was decent in the way that he also only has a 1 year deal and were not stuck with Chia handing unproven goalies 3 years. He needed a year to get in here and evaluate what we have in our minor system, and what we have outside of our big 2.

The only criticism I have on him is that he hasn’t taking shots at low risk options to help us on players like Fabbri.

I’m going to give him this offseason to see what happens, at that point he is past his evaluation stage and can actually try to build.

 

[Paralyzer]

Guy is Tambo 2.0

Hated the hire then, hate it now, will always hate in

Bring in progressive thinkers

Tambo was a puppet to Lowe. He never made trades because he needed approval from Lowe. Holland is taking his time evaluating and has only been here less than a year. But thanks for failing to recognize that.

 

[ZenOil]

Neal trade good. Everything else? Not good enough. Don't care what he inherited. The bottom 9 is as abysmal as ever.

 

[Aceboogie]

What did you want him to do in the one offseason he’s had in which he was handed an absolute **** show? He turned Lucic into something useful, he took a shot at addressing the bottom six and was smart enough to only give them all 1 year contracts so he can fix it if he has to. Taking a 1 year shot on Smith was decent in the way that he also only has a 1 year deal and were not stuck with Chia handing unproven goalies 3 years. He needed a year to get in here and evaluate what we have in our minor system, and what we have outside of our big 2.

The only criticism I have on him is that he hasn’t taking shots at low risk options to help us on players like Fabbri.

I’m going to give him this offseason to see what happens, at that point he is past his evaluation stage and can actually try to build.

Improved the bottom 6? He brought in absolute crap with no upside. The only ok addition in Haas, who is slightly above average

Many solid trades and signings happened this offseason that were in our budget that Holland failed to make.

This is yet another GM who stands on the sideline, like Tambo was

 

[Aceboogie]

Tambo was a puppet to Lowe. He never made trades because he needed approval from Lowe. Holland is taking his time evaluating and has only been here less than a year. But thanks for failing to recognize that.

Both failed to make trades, dont care what narrative gets invented as to why

 

[Louis Cypher]

If people want to cry about this season so far just think for a minute how few games we would have won if we had Lucic instead of Neal. I almost want to puke thinking about it. Would have been nice to have gotten a top 6 winger but we were left so f***ed by Chia that time is the really the only thing that can fix this situation.

 

[bucks_oil]

Ya, **** this guy.

Do nothing off season is paying off dividends.

Massive over-reaction...

1) it's been one, VERY CAP CONSTRAINED, off season and he unloaded our biggest issue in Lucic... the one people said we would NEVER be able to get rid of
2) the bottom six adds were multiple and stop-gaps at best... by design... so that we wouldn't skewer any cap flexibility that we eventually gain by expiring contracts. These were all 1-year deals with zero downside. Haas has stuck... Nygard is a maybe.
3) It's not even the trade deadline yet.
4) We are still in a playoff spot.
5) EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US predicted we would not be able to build a competitive roster for this season given the mess we had coming into July. You need to remind yourselves of your own (reasonable) expectations from last summer and not get emotionally tweaked by the promising early start.

 

[barry halls]

To everyone saying to 'wait until this summer to judge Holland', I'm wondering if you expect him to suddenly add 2 top-six wingers, a good 3rd line center, and stabilize the goaltending and defense in July? He'd have to have the biggest off-season of the decade to make this team legit in one summer.

With his history it seems more likely that he'll check one or two of those boxes at most, then continue to wait for prospects to ripen. We don't have time for another 3 or 4 year rebuild and that's what some of us are worried about. We should all be concerned about a McDavid trade request.

 

[bucks_oil]

To everyone saying to 'wait until this summer to judge Holland', I'm wondering if you expect him to suddenly add 2 top-six wingers, a good 3rd line center, and stabilize the goaltending and defense in July? He'd have to have the biggest off-season of the decade to make this team legit in one summer.

With his history it seems more likely that he'll check one or two of those boxes at most, then continue to wait for prospects to ripen. We don't have time for another 3 or 4 year rebuild and that's what some of us are worried about. We should all be concerned about a McDavid trade request.

Haas
Jurco
Nygard
Smith
Sheahan
Archibald
Granlund
Neal

Those were the additions. You can moan about the quality, but I'm sure Holland would too... that's a function of the cap space he was given. Last year he had about 8M for 6 roster spots.

Next year we'll have $24M for 13 roster spots. It's not ideal, but it's moving in the right direction.

I would be surprised if McD and agent are not fully in conversation with Holland about some of his plans. Any reasonable agent would give him a few seasons to sort out the mess.

 

[McFlash97]

what appreciation ?

we are worse then last year up to this point.. or close and this year we are running with 2 pl;ayers with nearly 60 points ..... and still no better.


we downgraded ..... lol

 

[TheUltimateOiler]

If hall is coming here in the off season, holland made the best decision for the franchise.