You're not alone in the thread though, and even if you are right on the issue I still think a name change is justified. This is almost exclusively a thread to complain and/or insult Chia, his moves and Oilers players on the other side of what are considered to be ****** trades. That is not what everyone expects considering that some posters don't consider 16/17 to be a fluke season.
Honestly, this place (hfoil) is on the verge of being more depressing now than it was at any time during the years of darkness. After last game and without actual real info I could have sworn that we just lost the 6th straight game.
Edit: by the way I thoght I had left this thread for a month starting yesterday, but the name change confused me dammit!
I'll admit that I do insult the GM quite a fair bit (Tobias Funke), but he has simply not delivered on what he was brought in to do. The Oilers have an incredibly talented center core and essentially nothing around it. I don't consider the 16/17 to be a fluke season but perhaps more of an illusion of what the team was capable of.
As to the bolded, I can explain that. During the decade of darkness it became more and more clear that the Oilers just couldn't contend without some elite talent spread throughout the lineup, and happened to tank during some rather... unimpressive draft years. Now the Oilers have elite talent, at least at center and are still drowning due to the same problems that plagued the organization previously, questionable drafting/development (Jesse P), signings (Lucic, Russell), and trades (Eberle, Hall, Reinhart). The only difference is that now there's a GM from outside the organization doing these things, but the results are remarkably similar to what we've seen before.
Last year was the first time I started feeling like there wasn't any hope for this team, even with McDavid. Even during the decade of darkness I still tuned into games, no matter who the Oilers were playing or how bad they were at the time (remember that entire month they didn't win a game?), but last year... Woof. The team was done by Halloween despite a pretty light schedule. No effort was made to improve a roster that had Stanley Cup aspirations and even as early as game 2 in the season there were alarming signs, as the team got run over by the Canucks despite losing by just a goal. This offseason, the GM brought in a backup goalie and a pair of bottom 6 forwards which addressed some concerns but most of the major ones still remain.
The cap situation is quite frankly not pretty. There isn't much room next year to fill 2 goalie spots and presumably a forward or two. Chiarelli has painted his team into an uncomfortable corner and the best the team can hope for is to sneak in the playoffs. If our best player was Hall or someone of that ilk, I'd be okay with at least making the playoffs... But we have Connor McDavid. There's no reason why this team shouldn't at bare minimum be a playoff contender. He is scary good. He can singlehandedly win us games and has already done that a few times this year. But if you can't succeed with that player, then I'm sorry, but you should never work in the NHL ever again. The Oilers were gifted the best of the best and he's been so good... And to surround him with this loser of a roster is insulting. I understand fully that building a team is not easy... But what has Chiarelli actually improved since he was hired? We've spent a wealth of decent assets and the defense is marginally better than when he began. And that to me is his second biggest failing behind not icing a competitive roster around McDavid.
