i know, but flukes happen in sports all the time and they count just as much....just look at last season's Kansas City Royals.
That is not the point though. The fact that it was through a huge set of good luck and players playing out of their minds to go along with barely eeking into the playoffs in the 1st place the rational person would realize that the team was not that close to being a perennial contender. Especially after Pronger said good bye.
Instead the Oilers signed some of the over achievers to too long of a term for too much money. They also convinced themselves (and a lot of fans) that macT was some kind of great coach.
The one cup run in the middle of overall poor management and coaching gave the regime just a ton of undeserved cred going forward.
First they went of the ill fates whale hunts trying to get the Vanek, Hossa, Nylander, Heatley. (and thank god they were crappy at closing the deal on some of those).
Then they went into rebuild mode but had two wait a few years for the bad contracts to go away. Since then it has been one large bag of fail with the latest incarnation being the worst. (That being the MacT era).
Probably the thing I found the most mind boggling of all was the support a good number of fans had for mact when hired and the total lack of diligence of local and national media in questioning the guys total lack of qualifications to be a gm at a critical time in the franchise.
The team has been and will be an utter joke for some time. After about 6 years of utter suckage the gm telling all next year is another 'developmental' year and they are looking for modest improvement is 100% outrageous. And yet the guy is only challenged by a few media types on it.