I will go ahead and COMPLETELY disagree with you here.
Irregardless of timeline, These are the players we need to make the post season:
- Starting Goaltender
- Top pairing Dmen
- High end 2nd Line Center.
But let's take things a step further:
- Nobody likes Kevin Lowe and the OBC, so none of the higher end Free Agents will sign here.
- We have the worst asset management in the NHL.
- We have the worst professional scouting in the NHL
- We have some of the worst Amateur scouting in the NHL
With all of these factors combined, we have a scenario people aptly call
'Spinning their Wheels'.
This is how Oilers assess Talent:
- ONE player goes on a 'Run' receives a massive 'overpayment' contract.
- The others on the team want the same pay.
- Despite outperforming the high performance contract, they are given the 'Shaft', and are dealt for picks at the deadline, while we are saddled with the Albatross.
- Because our Amateur and professional Scouting is so putrid, we receive back lowe caliber players than the ones we dealt away.
Wanna know how bad our Talent Assessment is?
Look at what our roster COULD Have looked like if we simply retained our key players, and signed a few complimentary UFA's, and kept everyone to reasonable cap-friendly contracts, and everyone WANTED to stay and play for this management:
Pouliot - RNH - Eberle
Hall - Horcoff - Yakupov
Glencross - Cogliano - Hemsky
Hendricks - Gagner - Gordon
Lander
Visnovsky - Petry
Gilbert - Souray
Klefbom - Ferrence
Schultz
Devan Dubnyk
Ben Scrivens
As of today, that would have been a team battling for a WildCard spot.