Speculation: Predicting Edmonton's ranking in the West

[Blue And Orange]

Uhm

Eager played 407 nhl games and from the time he made the flyers after a season and half in the AHL--he did not see the ahl until he signed with the oilers

so about 8 full nhl season (take away injury time)

sorry that was a mistake on my part. I meant to say Eager IS NOW a career AHLer (out of the league), not Eager WAS a career AHLer.

But yea, to emphasize the point, I was excited to see what Eager will bring to our team given that he seemed like a very effective third/fourth line bottom 6 grinder. We've seen some of that grit when he was a member of the Stanley Cup winning Blackhawks team in 2010.

 

[the2bears]

Team / Centers Depth/ Wingers / (Checking/ Team Defense) / Top Pairing Defense / Top 6 corps / Goaltending Tandem / Average Rating
1. Los Angeles 2 6 1 2 2 1 2.33
2. Chicago 4 1 2 1 1 10 3.17
3. St.Louis 3 3 3 4 3 12 4.67
4. Colorado 7 2 7 11 10 2 6.50
5. Minnesota 8 10 5 5 6 5 6.50
6. San Jose 1 8 6 7 8 11 6.83
7. Anaheim 5 7 4 8 11 7 7.00
8. Vancouver 10 5 8 9 7 4 7.17
9. Nashville 11 12 11 3 4 3 7.33
10. Arizona 9 13 9 6 5 8 8.33
11. Dallas 6 9 10 14 14 6 9.83
12. Edmonton 13 4 13 12 13 13 11.33
13. Winnipeg 12 11 12 13 9 14 11.83
14. Calgary 14 14 14 10 12 14 13.00

I ranked teams by position, and took their average rating and converted it into an index. On paper, that's how the west looks like to me going into this upcoming season.

Am I correct that you're ranking Edmonton's "checking/team defense" over Calgary's?

 

[Took a pill in Sbisa]

The Flames are the only team in the West I see us being undoubtably better than.
Bubble teams that others think we'll finish ahead of:

1. Nashville
They finished 21 points ahead of us last year with no top-line center, and 58 games with an AHL goalie. This season they'll have a top-5 NHL goalie in Pekka Rinne that should start 65-70 games, and a legitimate 60-point centerman.
2. Vancouver Canucks
Everything went wrong for the Canucks last year, everything. And they finished with 16 more points than us. They upgraded their Lack/Markstrom combo with Ryan Miller. Say what you want about Miller's small sample size in St. Louis but its indesputable that he's a legitimate starting goalie and a better goalie than we've had in a decade. Tortorella ran the Sedins into the ground, costing them about 60 points combined. They'll have a bounce-back year, and their first top-line winger (Vrbata) in their careers.
3. Winnepeg Jets
They did virtually nothing to their roster in the offseason. Which they wouldn't even have to to stay ahead of us as they beat us by 17 points last year. Paul Maurice was hired late in the year and the Jets were substantially better.
4. Arizona Coyotes
This is the only team that I think we'll have a chance to finish ahead of this year besides the Flames. They have one of the best coaching staffs in the league and have consistently been better than they should be.

So I see the Oilers likely finishing 14th in the West with a possibility of finishing 13th if Arizona can't find a way to score or if Mike Smith gets a long term injury.

So far so good.

Was funny reading this thread. Remember when posters thought we could finish ahead of San Jose?

Wondering if everyone's sticking to their opinion after the first 5 games.

 

[KeithIsActuallyBad]

14th. The crew on the Titanic is different but the Captains are the same (Eakins, MacT)

 

[Up the Irons]

well, we can adjust that ranking now. 14th is a slam dunk, guarantee now.

 

[headhunter]

is there a place lower than last? cause thats where its going to be.

 

[McShogun99]

Calgary finishing higher then us when they just started their rebuild and are supposed to be much worse on paper should be reason enough to clean houses on all of management and coaches. Mac T has done some nice things but has made some huge blunders. Last year was going into the season without a capable back up for Dubnyk if he failed. Then he went into this season knowing that we had zero center depth and did nothing to fix it. Not to mention the biggest blunder of all, sticking with a coach that is in way over his head and has no idea what he's doing.

 

[shoop]

Calgary finishing higher then us when they just started their rebuild and are supposed to be much worse on paper should be reason enough to clean houses on all of management and coaches. Mac T has done some nice things but has made some huge blunders. Last year was going into the season without a capable back up for Dubnyk if he failed. Then he went into this season knowing that we had zero center depth and did nothing to fix it. Not to mention the biggest blunder of all, sticking with a coach that is in way over his head and has no idea what he's doing.

14th appears likely at this point.

From here on out I want to see Eakins canned, MacT take a flyer on a few potential centres and give Ramsay a good run as interim coach.

Maybe this team can turn it around and finish 11th or so in the conference.

I'll wait at least until the World Series is over before I invest another evening watching the Oilers. Then I will watch a game if, and only if, the Oilers have won a game by then or Eakins has been fired.

 

[GretzkytoKurri9917]

Place in the west: 15th

Teams we'll be on top of: Buffalo


We take Jack Eichel and Buffalo takes Connor McDavid.

not bad.

 

[Gone]

1. Dallas (Two great centers, Benn, Hemsky, Goaltending and a real coach)
2. Chicago (Great team)
3. Anaheim (Great team)
4. LA (Great team)
5. St Louis (The top 5 teams in the west, each could top out the east)
6. San Jose (When will Thorton slow down?)
7. Colorado (Young talent will repeat a good show. Landeskog is a beast)
8. Vancouver (Sedin's will be back)
9. Minnesota (Lot's of talent, just outside the playoffs)
10. Nashville (Great defence wins games, but might no be enough here).
11.Winnipeg (Bottom 4 are a crap shoot really)
12.Calgary (Ditto; solid defence, and some young guns which may suprise)
13.Edmonton (Ditto; questionable coaching - goaltending; were the additions changing deck chair's or substantive changes?)
14.Phoenix (Good timing for a bad year)

I may have under estimated Calgary and over estimated Cokorado given thie goaltending woes.

 

[Took a pill in Sbisa]

The Flames are the only team in the West I see us being undoubtably better than.
Bubble teams that others think we'll finish ahead of:

1. Nashville
They finished 21 points ahead of us last year with no top-line center, and 58 games with an AHL goalie. This season they'll have a top-5 NHL goalie in Pekka Rinne that should start 65-70 games, and a legitimate 60-point centerman.
2. Vancouver Canucks
Everything went wrong for the Canucks last year, everything. And they finished with 16 more points than us. They upgraded their Lack/Markstrom combo with Ryan Miller. Say what you want about Miller's small sample size in St. Louis but its indesputable that he's a legitimate starting goalie and a better goalie than we've had in a decade. Tortorella ran the Sedins into the ground, costing them about 60 points combined. They'll have a bounce-back year, and their first top-line winger (Vrbata) in their careers.
3. Winnepeg Jets
They did virtually nothing to their roster in the offseason. Which they wouldn't even have to to stay ahead of us as they beat us by 17 points last year. Paul Maurice was hired late in the year and the Jets were substantially better.
4. Arizona Coyotes
This is the only team that I think we'll have a chance to finish ahead of this year besides the Flames. They have one of the best coaching staffs in the league and have consistently been better than they should be.

So I see the Oilers likely finishing 14th in the West with a possibility of finishing 13th if Arizona can't find a way to score or if Mike Smith gets a long term injury.

Pretty bang on.
I was wrong about the Flames, but it looks like everyone else in this thread was as well.

What interests me is the disconnect a lot of the fans on here have with the reality that is the Oilers. I've been living in Australia for 7 years, watch less than a dozen games a year, and it was pretty clear we were in line for a bottom-3 finish. How is it that fans living in Edmonton that watch the games consistently can be so far off the mark? I'm assuming it has to do with the mainstream media that seems to see things through the rose-colored glasses that their employers, the Oilers, give them every off-season. Maybe its the fact that being consumed by the coverage in Edmonton just leads to unwavering hope. Would love to hear the perspective of those living in Edmonton.

 

[McDrai]

I'm thinking around 13th
I'll start raising my expectations once they prove that they can become at least a semi-competitive team. I'm talking losing games by 1-2 goals at the most

Bingo

 

[Dorian2]

Pretty bang on.
I was wrong about the Flames, but it looks like everyone else in this thread was as well.

What interests me is the disconnect a lot of the fans on here have with the reality that is the Oilers. I've been living in Australia for 7 years, watch less than a dozen games a year, and it was pretty clear we were in line for a bottom-3 finish. How is it that fans living in Edmonton that watch the games consistently can be so far off the mark? I'm assuming it has to do with the mainstream media that seems to see things through the rose-colored glasses that their employers, the Oilers, give them every off-season. Maybe its the fact that being consumed by the coverage in Edmonton just leads to unwavering hope. Would love to hear the perspective of those living in Edmonton.

My perspective.

At least we don't have poisonous snakes and spiders, along with Great White's to deal with.

Hope that answers your question.

BTW: it's always fun to see what poster's thought of at the beginning of the season at this time. There's always a chuckle or 2.

 

[CupofOil]

13th beating out Calgary. Looking at all the other west teams, i just can't picture the Oilers finishing ahead of any of them.

Winnipeg has always been a bubble team hovering around a playoff spot. I see them taking a bit of a step back this season because other teams have gotten better but they still have a solid roster outside of the goaltending.

As long as Nashville has the best Dman in the game and one of the top goalies, they will always be competitive. They added some nice pieces as well with Neal and some decent veteran centers.

Vancouver, forget about it. I think they are clearly still better than the Oilers.

Arizona will be competitive due to system play. Anytime a team buys into a system, they usually remain somewhat competitive and that team has run the same system for years.

Who else??? I'd say that there's an outside chance that they pass Winnipeg or Nashville but it's a remote chance IMO. I'll believe it when i see it.

I got the 13th right but the rest of the predictions? Sheesh

It shows how unpredictable the NHL is from year to year except for the Oilers as the Philly broadcast today put it "The Oilers are a foregone conclusion to not make the playoffs every year".

 

[KeithIsActuallyBad]

14th. The crew on the Titanic is different but the Captains are the same (Eakins, MacT)

Hmph. I am a smart person.

 

[guymez]

Interesting point.

I remember we started the 2011/12 season with a start that is home games heavy and we got off to a 7-2-1 start or something like that. After that, the rest was history and we finish 29th.

I see us doing the exact same thing. And the great thing is, we have teams in the East like Carolina, Tampa, and Washington coming.

AS mentioned in my previous post, I see the Oilers having an above average record against teams in the East. Thankfully with 30 games against the East, it should insulate our record a bit when we face the tough wild West.

Well...you were right on the mark about their record against the East.

I vowed to be optimistic to start the season and I was horribly wrong on everything.

Back to being realistic. Its much less fun but also less painful.

 

[Spawn]

Hmph. I am a smart person.

You were off one.

I nailed it with my 13th prediction. Although the team I predicted to finish below Edmonton was Calgary, not Phoenix. Although I acknowledged the possibility of Calgary outclassing Edmonton again this year.

 

[KeithIsActuallyBad]

You were off one.

I nailed it with my 13th prediction. Although the team I predicted to finish below Edmonton was Calgary, not Phoenix. Although I acknowledged the possibility of Calgary outclassing Edmonton again this year.

Yeah I had not foreseen that Arizona would be worse.

Thanks to the East we were not last in the conference.

 

[rboomercat90]

Now that Barry Trotz is gone in Nashville I think this is the year they fall off a cliff. He always seemed to get everything his players had to give. The glue that held a lot of bad teams together. With new coaches and new systems coming in it could finally fall apart there. To me this is the only Western team the Oilers finish ahead of.

We should be better than Calgary but we should have been better last year too. As long as the Flames are showing up and competing every night like they have been under Hartley they'll stay ahead of the Oilers. Unless the Oilers develop a willingness to outwork their opponents they're pretty much stuck where they've been. Maybe this is the year some of our guys start showing commitment to doing everything they need to do to win. After what we saw a lot of nights last year it's hard to imagine it happening.

I still think there's too big of a gap to catch anybody else in the conference unless somebody gets hit really hard by injuries.

I had Nashville wrong (although they sure have pulled the shoot in the last six weeks or so) but I pretty much nailed what I thought the Oilers would do. I'm not great at making predictions but I do know how to spot a bull ******* when I see one and Oilers management is full of them. It's become very easy to guess what this team is going to do.

 

[GretzkytoKurri9917]

Place in the west: 15th

Teams we'll be on top of: Buffalo


We take Jack Eichel and Buffalo takes Connor McDavid.

Damn you Arizona!

 

[EchoesoftheEighties]

13th in the West beating out only Winnipeg.

I meant original Winnipeg

Knew we'd completely suck though. Until the Oilers give me a reason to be optimistic, I won't be.

 

[Gone]

1. Dallas (Two great centers, Benn, Hemsky, Goaltending and a real coach)
2. Chicago (Great team)
3. Anaheim (Great team)
4. LA (Great team)
5. St Louis (The top 5 teams in the west, each could top out the east)
6. San Jose (When will Thorton slow down?)
7. Colorado (Young talent will repeat a good show. Landeskog is a beast)
8. Vancouver (Sedin's will be back)
9. Minnesota (Lot's of talent, just outside the playoffs)
10. Nashville (Great defence wins games, but might no be enough here).
11.Winnipeg (Bottom 4 are a crap shoot really)
12.Calgary (Ditto; solid defence, and some young guns which may suprise)
13.Edmonton (Ditto; questionable coaching - goaltending; were the additions changing deck chair's or substantive changes?)
14.Phoenix (Good timing for a bad year)

At least I got the bottom 2 teams correct!!! Some comfort.

 

[Gone]

Sadly I agree, I wonder if Hfboards crashes because it will complete pandemonium if this happens.

Nope we are all still here.

 

[ponokanocker]

Pretty funny the optimism people had coming into this season. I guess they agreed with McT about him fixing the blueline. I didn't rebuy my tickets because I was so dissapointed with it. Pretty happy about that desicion.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

I was waaaay to optimistic with a 36-36-10 record...only 12 wins off! and 11th would've been a dream!

most were way off with Calgary though