What an absolutely dumb take. I know you hate Hall but Strome for Spooner is a worse move than Hall for Larsson to you?!
I don't hate hate Hall, but I really couldn't stand Eberle on the team.
You can't tell me Hall would have had the same season if he hadn't left Edmonton. He was getting complacent in Edmonton and Eberle lost all their drive the minute he signed his 2nd contract.
Hall and Eberle became very entitled players the minute we signed them to their 2nd contracts.
In Eberle's last two seasons with the Oilers it was so rare to see Eberle strip players of the puck, pressure puck carriers, do anything relevant in the defensive zone, intercept the opposition's passes and don't get me started on going in to corners, blocking shots or hitting because we always knew he was never that kind of player. Before he made the team he was heralded as Captain Clutch for his play in the world juniors and a lot of us thought we had our RW to replace Hemsky (talent-wise) but it turned out that Eberle didn't really care much about winning. He just wanted to have fun skating around with his friends while making millions of dollars.
Hall is a great player, but he was overly selfish in Edmonton. He didn't have the tool box to pull off what he was attempting to do in Edmonton. Only player that ever clicked well with him was Drai and it was surprising to actually see him setting someone up for goals for once, but it was too late. We had McDavid and we needed a culture change in the dressing room along with help on the blueline.
I think it was during Justin Schultz's second season under Eakins... we were so brutal. It was the season when Yakupov was pissed off that he wasn't getting any minutes and he refused to go back to the bench at the end of his shift and stayed on for 3-4 shifts. During that season when things were looking the most brutal you'd hear all this talk that our great leader of the future Taylor Hall had his buddies Hopkins, Eberle and Schultz and he'd never give any other players on the team the time of day. It was as if all of his other teammates were just temporary fixtures to him.
When Eberle and Hall left Edmonton they became better players over night. Eberle actually back checks and block shots now and Hall actually consistently makes use of the players playing with him for once. No way would it be reasonable to expect either of them to change like this if they'd never left Edmonton.
As for Strome for Spooner... Strome wasn't producing offense, but other than McDavid and whoever was on his line,
NOBODY ELSE WAS. If you ignored all of the offensive stats Strome was looking awesome. It wasn't his fault that he wasn't given any snipers to play with. He passed the puck around very well on the 2nd PP, on the PK and at even strength but there was nobody for him to pass to. Chaison was on the 1st PP and our 5th best shooter in Kassian didn't start playing well to get his ass off of the 4th line until 2019.
Before Spooner played 2 games for the Oilers it was evident that he didn't belong in the NHL and it became increasingly difficult to give him 10 minutes of ice time per game, while you could afford to put Strome out for 15+ minutes a game without having to worry about burning your team.
