If Puljujarvi and Yamamoto are the duds I fear they are, we're in for a long stretch of pain. it's one thing to whiff on the 31 and beyond picks, but if you don't nail your first rounders, you're S.O.L. We;ve done that far too often over the past dozen years.
TSN: Peter Chiarelli has been fired by the Oilers. Done deal
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If Puljujarvi and Yamamoto are the duds I fear they are, we're in for a long stretch of pain. it's one thing to whiff on the 31 and beyond picks, but if you don't nail your first rounders, you're S.O.L. We;ve done that far too often over the past dozen years.
No question about it. I share the same fears about Yamo and PJ. Going to be one of the most interesting off seasons in Oiler land in a long while.
And creating cap space is incredibly difficult. The team was two years from cap hell because the moment the Connor McDavid cap number dropped it was going to be literally impossible to get anything of value for the pieces being dumped. Any general manager stepping into that position knew exactly what he was getting into in terms of where the cap was going. Don't fool yourself thinking that everything was going to be A-OK had we just decided to sit and wait around.
The team I'm speaking of is the one that earned the Connor McDavid pick. The only significant injuries that team faced was about 30 games of Taylor Hall, who was on pace to put up about 50 points. That team gave up nearly a hundred more goals than they scored that season.
You're nuts if you think that any manager with half a brain thought that just adding Connor McDavid was going to fix everything from that roster. That team was an absolute disaster. And the Oscar Klefbom you're talking about was a second year pro. He and Darnell Nurse needed development or the Oilers would have risked following the same paths they'd gone down with other previously failed defensemen. We're talking about a team that consistently failed to develop them--for years.
The cap space that needs to be cleared will be cleared within the next two seasons. The overhaul of the bottom six you're speaking of is not a significant task because the current version of that bottom six is filled with plug-and-play forwards. None of those guys are here on term and the people who replace them will be making essentially the same amount money.
And no team signs a top four defenseman because their other one gets injured often. Again here's a guy complaining about the cap and suggesting something like this in the same breath.
So what we're left with right now is essentially the Oilers targeting two scoring wingers and a handful of depth forwards. Again, I'm not seeing where you see that as an overly difficult task.
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So what moves paved the way for us to meet the cap crunch? $6Mx7 for Lucic? $4Mx4 for #4?
Yeah we were in for a cap crunch with Drai and McDavid needing new deals. Adding almost $25M in dead weight hasn't helped, though.
Huh?
What's you point here? I've been saying all along this team is 2-3 years away from righting the ship.
Did I say they need to sign a top 4 D? I said they need one and that's the case regardless of whether Klefbom stays healthy or not.
If scoring wingers are so easy to come by, it begs the question of why we haven't had any for the past two season. But yes, the Oilers are a couple of tweaks from being a true contender for a wild card spot. If that's your end goal, we're in great shape.
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The Hall trade for a young, cost-controlled defenseman on a long term deal. Something they never would've gotten scoring the FA market. Moving out Eberle. Buyouts. Money was moving out in any way possible from a team with very few assets that actually held value.
And the signings are irrelevant in this discussion. Because we're talking about the job the new manager was walking into.
2014-15 Edmonton Oilers Roster and Statistics | Hockey-Reference.com
The previous season. What the new GM was walking into.
This team now has the ability to compete. I'm not sure what your stipulations are for 'righting the ship', but my point is that our cap situation is in a far better position than it was in 2015 simply based on the fact that it's not at any risk of an eventual cap crunch. We're not in a position where it's a necessity to move assets at a reduced cost to alleviate cap.
The Oilers are not in the market for a top four defenseman. They may make a small upgrade, but no, they're not in a situation where they're actively searching for one.
As for the point regarding wingers, yes, they cost money that we haven't had. And yes, the Oilers' are several years from being considered a true contender. That shit doesn't happen overnight. And it doesn't happen until your team starts churning out its own internal depth--not relying on UFA signings and trades.
The cap gains of which were immediately nullified by the addition of Lucic.
And taken up by a plethora of small overpays. The thousand cuts.
Yes, the new manager walked into an extremely advantageous cap situation with just $18M in cap space tied to long term deals and almost $30M in free space before Draisaitl contract would came up for extension. This cap space dog doesn't hunt at all.
It's a mediocre (at best) team that can "compete" for the playoffs if McDavid plays 25 minutes a night and no one gets hurt. I fail to see how the possibility of a looming cap crunch is worse than a capped out roster that's handcuffed by having too much money tied up in players whose cap hits and value are drastically out of whack.
Weasel words. Not looking for one and needing one aren't the same thing.
No it doesn't happen overnight, but they'd be a lot closer to that point if Chia hadn't shot all his toes off. That's the sum total of the argument here.
guymez
The Seldom Seen Kid
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If by duds you mean bubble NHL players then IMO they dont even have to be duds. If they turn out to be NHL players but bottom 6 instead of top 6 then thats a major problem. This is exacerbated by the terrible Reinhart deal which used up a 1st and a 2nd round draft pick in the 2015 draft which in all likelihood would have been a top 6 player or top 4 dman on this team at this point in time.
Its the accumulated damage of what Chia and friends did over the last 3+ years that has really put this team in a bad spot moving forward.
Connor surely knows when he looks around the room that this will not be a quick fix...we are looking at 2 years before this team will be able to work around the current situation. So that means that he will have been with this team for 6 years before it has a chance to seriously compete and thats if everything goes according to plan.
Must be incredibly deflating for him because it sure is for me and I am just a fan.
The whole "this is the 14-15 Oilers that Chiarelli inhertied" part is still disingenious.
He inherited that roster OK, BUT he also got McDavid + Draisaitl + Klefbom + Nurse none of whom had played a full season in the NHL until then. He basically had two rebuilds worth to start with ... Hall + RNH + Eberle + Schultz and then also got McDavid + Draisaitl + Klefbom + Nurse, which the previous regimes really never got to work with.
Klefbom was the only guy who had played like 70 games, and the first 80 games for just about any d-man are a write off. McDavid/Draisaitl/Nurse were basically all effectively rookies.
Like imagine his this current group but having Jack Hughes/Pierre Luc Dubois/Mikhail Sergachev/Jakob Chychrun added to it. That's not an insignificant add.
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And he added nothing. Four years and the closest thing to an impact player he added through trade, draft or signing is Larsson.
frag2
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This. Chia was so dead set on getting Lucic and attempting to recreate his slow ass grinding Bruins that he was willing to do whatever it took.
No, apparently you're completely missing the argument. This discussion started about you stating the new general manager is stepping into a much more difficult situation then Peter Chiarelli did.
Are the Edmonton Oilers currently looking for one of the rarest positional players in the game--on term and still young-- while coming to the table with their very limited resources today? No! The Edmonton Oilers are currently looking for scoring wingers--end stop.
It boggles the mind that with history available to people, they can't see how difficult that job was back then. They get distracted by 'talent' on that roster and consistently fail to acknowledge that the 'talent' on that roster consistently yielded lottery picks. News flash! The OBC rebuild was a colossal failure. The new GM stepping into that role, regardless of who he was was taking over a team that was 20 games under 0.500. And a team that required A LOT OF TURNOVER for various reasons.
This current iteration is a 0.500 hockey team despite missing their top defenseman and still running one of the least effective PPs in the game. The teams aren't remotely comparable in any way. That roster was one of the worst built teams in the history of the league. This one is currently a bubble team when healthy.
Not understanding how you can't see that.
Second pairing D men?
Scoring wingers cost money/assets. Money and assets that we don't have.
But even that's an oversimplification. This team needs to be able to ice at least two lines of players who don't get caved in the instant the guy wearing number 97 gets off the ice.
No one is disputing that. The issue, which your spin won't change, is that Chia came into the situation with a lot of problems, but also a lot of good pieces to work with and absolutely made a hash of it. Trading for Reinhart, trading Hall, signing Lucic; these are each of them fireable offenses; taken together, they are franchise-crippling.
That's probably why no one is comparing them. Of course this team is better. It has Connor McDavid! It f**king should be better! If we went back to the day the Oilers won the McDavid lottery and I told you that we were 6-7 years at best from being a serious playoff threat, I really doubt you'd think that was a good outcome.
I dunno, you seem to have this fatalistic attitude that everything Chia did was something any other GM would have done and that the mediocrity we're seeing every night is just an inevitable byproduct of circumstances beyond the GM's control. Not his fault, just something in the water.
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He probably thought he was a genius and it was a master stroke move.
Disingenuous? It's a fact.
You're telling me so and so hadn't played together--two of which are young defenseman who completely lacked valuable NHL experience. We're not talking about those players as they are today. They were players who required sheltering or we were risking turning their development sideways.
And you can say that every year about the Edmonton Oilers since they were consistently introducing a new high draft pick getting thrown into the mix each season. That method wasn't working. The Edmonton Oilers were a poor defensive team. They were routinely mocked as being the easiest team to play against in the league. Opposing players called us a junior team. That happened.
As for the 'two rebuilds' spiel. Whoopty Doo. Justin Schultz had both feet out the door and our fan base was completely done with him. The other three you mentioned we're literally the only assets that team had that held enough value to actually get something positive in return.
Again, it's pretty simple. In 2015 it was common knowledge the Oilers were in the market for a right-handed defenseman capable of playing significant minutes. They were looking for one of the rarest positional players on the market at the time. And the assets they had to trade for one were extremely limited. What are the Oilers in the market for right now that's so difficult to find?
The team is better, the cap outlook is better, the prospects are better and the team has more tradeable assets that don't necessarily impact the current roster. Where's the disconnect here?
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Exactly. This team has McDavid on it, it takes a special breed of stupid to not at least have a team that can flirt with .500 when everyone is healthy with him.
Honestly right now, if you said we could have the 14-15 group back to go with McDavid or keep this current group to go with current McDavid/Drai/RNH/Klef/Nurse ... I'd take 14-15 lol ...
IN: Hall, Eberle, Schultz, Nikitin, Ference, Purcell, Fayne, Yakupov
OUT: Larsson, Lucic, Spooner, Sekera, Manning, Russell, Puljujarvi
Current McDavid + current Draisaitl + current Nurse + current Klefbom + current RNH stay.
Yeah, yeah our D would downgrade a bit, but honestly it's complete garbage as is without Klefbom, it's plain as day he's the one that makes it look half decent.
It's better only because they have 4th year McDavid, 5th year Draisaitl, matured Klefbom and Nurse ... all of which they had before.
The core outside of that, honestly I would dump it all to take back the 14-15 group.
(current) McDavid + (current) Draisaitl + (current) RNH + Hall + Eberle is a massive upgrade at forward whereas
(current) Klefbom + (current) Nurse + Schultz + Fayne isn't much worse than Klefbom + Larsson + Nurse + Russell + Manning.
Expectations.
You're content to ignore the missed opportunities and focus on the marginal gains the team has made, gains that would have been inevitable under any semi-competent GM.
Dude, the 'missed opportunities' are not a part of the discussion here. Why can't you figure that out?
My initial response to you was about the difficulty of the job the GM was stepping into. But for some reason you seem to be leaning towards arguing about what was actually done. It's all irrelevant to the initial point.
I pointed out to you a very valid point that the Oilers are in a better situation today. You proceeded to go on a tangent. Have fun.
@Soundwave Yes the fact that our players are more experienced is a very valid point. It's the primary reason the on-ice product is night and day vs the 2015 product. We also managed to collect a decent group of valuable prospects that actually have value on the trade market. The organizational needs are significantly less than they were back then.
It's a simple point. The new GM has an easier job when you consider the fewer challenges he faces.
I would hope it would be easier to build a team when you have the best player in the world in his prime and another All-Star caliber center/winger in his early 20s as well.
I would still revert back to the 14-15 group if it meant dumping the current group of players that surround them though.
Effectively
Hall + Eberle + Schultz
for
Lucic, Larsson, Spooner
but having to compromise and surround Nurse + Klefbom with
Russell + Sekera + Manning
for
Nikitin + Fayne + Ference (LTIR)
Yeah sure, the second group of D is worse, but really not much worse of a downgrade. Klefbom is really the main element the D needs to be healthy the rest is just a bunch of filler nonsense and neither group is great defensively.
At least with Hall + Eberle we would have a dynamite top six with current iterations of McDavid + Drai + RNH (who himself is better than he was 3 years ago).
Because I don't think it's better to have a capped team with significant roster needs and little in the way of moveable assets than a team with future cap issues, significant roster needs and a bucket of assets to work with.
And yeah, those opportunities are part of the discussion whether you like it or not. Why? Because they have a direct bearing on the current situation. Man, if you thought chiarelli was under the microscope the new guy is going to have it much worse.
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rboomercat90
Registered User
I’m a day late here as I’m just catching up on this thread. Theres been so much to read in the last 36 hours.
On the surface, it sounds like it was a classy move for Nicholson to fire Chiarelli during the intermission to allow him enough time to get out of the building. I still don’t see why he needed to do it that way. He says the decision to fire him was already made before the game and that the Detroit game had no impact. Why not have just done it earlier in the day before the building filled up? Not classy at all, really. I didn’t think Nicholson had a flair for the dramatic but maybe he does.
rboomercat90
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The scouting department has to be MUCH better for this team. They need to identify right f***ing now if they think Yamo will turn out to be a top-6 player, and if not then trade him before his value is demolished. They've done a terrible job of projecting players. And they need to get this right. That's how you win trades that can make a huge difference to the trajectory of the team. It's one aspect of how the problems of this team go much deeper than just the GM.
This is just my guess but I think Duane Sutter, Bob Greene, and Scott Howson are done here too. They just can't fire everyone right now because they'd have basically no staff for the rest of the year.
Mac T will lose his job too but reassigned to being a scout because he's Katz' buddy. Keith Gretzky will stay as head of scouting.
New GM and POHO will be two different people.
Mac T will lose his job too but reassigned to being a scout because he's Katz' buddy. Keith Gretzky will stay as head of scouting.
New GM and POHO will be two different people.
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