The Definition of Insanity...

[Cerebral]

A common quote is that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Unfortunately, I feel this describes the Oilers to perfection. Last season had a multitude of issues including goaltending and special teams woes but the end-of-season stats are quite clear: the team finished bottom 5 in the NHL in goals against and the team was 1 goal away from finishing bottom 10 in goals for.

I believe a lot of this disastrous season can be linked to two decisions by Chiarelli in relation to team depth:

1. That Caggiula, Puljujarvi and Slepyshev would pick up their play and replace Eberle's scoring on the wing
2. That Benning would continue to improve and soak up the minutes from Sekera's absence

Fast forward a season and Chiarelli's gamble failed miserably on both fronts. Slepyshev, Puljujarvi, and Caggiula put up a combined 52 points last year (one more than Eberle alone the previous season) and Benning's play was up-and-down all year and he ended up only playing 17 minutes a game. By all accounts, the 2017-18 season was a complete disaster.

However, I don't think Chiarelli or the rest of the management team learned from this at all. Going into this season, I still see the SAME two issues that we have failed to address:

1. We lack depth on right wing. Caggiula, Yamamoto, Rattie, Puljujarvi, and Aberg are all competing for top 6 spots - they have a combined 88 points across their entire career. I thought Rieder was a great depth add for the bottom 6 but he's likely the best current candidate for a top 6 spot on RW and he's never topped 37 points in his career. The reality is that we're banking on our existing guys stepping up and if they don't, we'll have next to no scoring depth on the team.

2. Once again Sekera is injured and once again we haven't made any moves to address our lack of defensive depth (at least so far). I honestly felt that even with a healthy Sekera, we needed to add a legit top 4 defenceman to be serious contenders. As it stands, our defensive depth looks something like this:

Klefbom-Larsson
Nurse-Benning
Russell-Bear/Bouchard

Even if all 6 of those players are healthy, I don't think that's a playoff defence. The truth, however, is that we won't be healthy all season - one injury to one of Klefbom, Larsson, or Nurse (who now has a lot of pressure on him to be consistent) and we likely have both Benning and Russell playing top 4 minutes for a number of games. I've seen a lot of talk about bringing in guys like Franson or Enstrom but all that does is help solidify our bottom pairing.

Last season was a disaster and if something doesn't change in the next month, I think this season is shaping up to be one as well. Once again we are banking on our existing options having huge turnarounds and leading us to success. Guys like Rattie or Yamamoto could definitely blow up this season but it's far more likely they struggle. Good teams make moves to address their weaknesses and bad teams pray things magically change - unfortunately, we're looking like we need to pray hard this season.

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[CupofOil]

Not that I disagree but what could he realistically do?
His hands were tied, due to his own mistakes, so they were stuck in a situation with little cap space and not enough depth to trade from an area of strength to fill an area of weakness without turning that area of strength into an area of weakness.
Unless you wanted him to deal the 10th pick for immediate help (which would have been a big mistake IMO), I don't see any move that could have been made that could have significantly improved the team immediately. Most teams have expendable assets to address needs, the Oilers don't have one.

In any event, I agree that it looks grim for this coming season. Outside of McDavid, Larsson, Russell (in the proper role) and Brodziak?, is there one player that isn't a question mark going into the season in their current role?
Even Nuge at wing and Draisaitl driving his own line are question marks right now. Outside of roughly the bottom 10 teams, is there a team with more question marks than the Oilers right now? I'm hard pressed to find one. My expectations are very low as a result.

 

[Spawn]

Not that I disagree but what could he realistically do?
His hands were tied, due to his own mistakes, so they were stuck in a situation with little cap space and not enough depth to trade from an area of strength to fill an area of weakness without turning that area of strength into an area of weakness.
Unless you wanted him to deal the 10th pick for immediate help (which would have been a big mistake IMO), I don't see any move that could have been made that could have significantly improved the team immediately. Most teams have expendable assets to address needs, the Oilers don't have one.

In any event, I agree that it looks grim for this coming season. Outside of McDavid, Larsson, Russell (in the proper role) and Brodziak?, is there one player that isn't a question mark going into the season in their current role?
Even Nuge at wing and Draisaitl driving his own line are question marks right now. Outside of roughly the bottom 10 teams, is there a team with more question marks than the Oilers right now? I'm hard pressed to find one. My expectations are very low as a result.

The bold seems like such a cop out.

It's his job to make the team better. It's his job to make smart signings and smart trades. Not enough cap space? Maybe don't sign a 2.5M backup. Maybe don't give Drake Caggiula 1.5M when he shouldn't even be playing in this league. Maybe don't blow 300K on buying out Erik Gryba.

If couldn't dig his way out of the whole that he created for himself, than he should have been fired.

Great post by Cerebral.

 

[Beerfish]

"Not that I disagree but what could he realistically do?
His hands were tied, due to his own mistakes"

I agree with the above part of the post. He's made such awful mistakes in previous years he had few options. This includes such awful one sided trades that no one will deal in good faith with him again. He is a soft touch with the rep of always giving in. He got owned by Garth freaking Snow twice.

I can only imagine what mcdavid could do with two good wingers and an offensively gifted dman.

 

[CupofOil]

The bold seems like such a cop out.

It's his job to make the team better. It's his job to make smart signings and smart trades. Not enough cap space? Maybe don't sign a 2.5M backup. Maybe don't give Drake Caggiula 1.5M when he shouldn't even be playing in this league. Maybe don't blow 300K on buying out Erik Gryba.

If couldn't dig his way out of the whole that he created for himself, than he should have been fired.

Great post by Cerebral.

I agree, great post by Cerebral and I wish he would post more often like he did in the old days.

As far as the bolded is concerned, that's fine and all but it's the reality of the situation.
Realistically, he was going to have to spend minimum 1.5M to get a proven, quality backup (not a fan of the Koskinen signing btw), and they weren't just going to dump Cagguila after two seasons of moderately decent production as an early 20s player. 1.5 might have been the slightest of overpays but whatever, such a minor thing to quibble about. The Gryba buyout was stupid but again, whatever. These moves aren't preventing a major move so they are largely irrelevant.

My point is that significant moves just weren't in the cards this offseason because of how handicapped the team was and everybody knew it but continues to be surprised when the big splashy move didn't happen.
If you can present a viable solution that could have dug this team out of the mess, I would love to hear it because I have no idea what could have been done. Does 10th overall for Faulk or something like that get your juices flowing? I think that would have been a mistake but maybe you feel differently? Dealing Klefbom, Nurse or Nuge in a lateral move? Which trade or signing could have moved the needle in a big way in your opinion? The Oilers have no depth at any position, not enough to make a deal without creating a big hole, and limited cap space. Where's the big move coming from?

 

[Kamus]

I am at a point that I am prepared to suck again. Chia lost all credibility with me a long time ago. I want him to do nothing, fail, get fired instead of trying to "help" the team by making a move that will dig us even deeper. I don't want him to make another pennies on the dollar short term remedy trade. All the issues we have are due to incompetent management over the last years.

 

[belair]

The failure that was last season falls far beyond our lack of depth on the wing or our personnel on defense. Not that better players wouldn't have necessarily turned our fortunes, but the execution we saw from the current group was sub-par through the entire team--even including the two guys who we rely on to stir the drink offensively--who failed to execute on the man advantage all season. The goaltending and special teams we saw through 2017/18 would've sunk any team. Also list the players whose individual results declined from the previous season and its apparent why our team saw such a drastic step back. The absence of a 50 point winger on our second forward unit doesn't list nearly as high in terms of what set the team back last season.

In the salary cap world every team has to make decisions as to how they would like to allocate their cap, which is why every team has a 'lack of depth' somewhere on their roster unless they are fortunate enough to have a strong and consistent enough development model where they find themselves in a one or two year window where they have the fortune of seeing a number of quality ELCs on their roster (see Winnipeg). It's been apparent from day one our management from top to bottom values their depth down the middle.

To the second point, where's the evidence that without a second pairing defenseman, this team is doomed before launch? Our top pairing sucked last year. Both guys took massive steps backward. Literally the only defenseman who saw significant improvement last season was Darnell Nurse, unless you want to count Benning who also saw decent statistical improvement. The team has never run traditional pairings under Todd McLellan, which is why even in the instance of a healthy Andrej Sekera, he was still technically a bottom pairing defenseman.

So is it really so important to see significant immediate short term improvement that valuable future cap should've been used this summer to procure marquee players to address these needs you've pointed out? Even at the expense of quality playing time for an emerging prospect like Jesse Puljujarvi.

 

[Bryanbryoil]

I think that on D we may see something more like this:

Nurse-Larsson (defensive match-ups)
Klefbom-Benning (offensive match-ups)
Gravel/Russell-Russell/Bouchard/Bear/Waiver/PTO

We saw something like this last season and if Klefbom bounces back this may not be too bad if Benning takes a step forward. That said if any of the top 4 has a tough go of it and none of Bouchard or Bear take a big step up in play we are in trouble. If that ends up being the case we need guys like Puljujarvi and Yamamoto to step up big and be like Toronto and try to outscore our defensive woes.

 

[redgrant]

Its a sad situation but Chiarelli cant do much thanks to his own stupidity. Contracts like Lucic's and Russell prevent us from going after a 6 million dman.

 

[KeithIsActuallyBad]

"What could he do?" is the same tired excuse that we used with previous regimes. I just can't comprehend that after Anaheim exposed our defense in round 2 over a year ago, that not only has the defense not improved, it's arguably gotten worse. This is only compounded by a second lengthy injury to Sekera, whose presence was sorely missed last year and when he returned he actually made the team worse.

And of course this opens the door for Bouchard to take a spot no matter if he earns it or not. I don't want to see him in the opening lineup. I want the Oilers to be patient with this prospect and be practical about our defense, which despite trading away a wealth of assets, is still our biggest weakness. Chiarelli has made a ton of big and little mistakes that were entirely preventable with some pragmatism. Of course we couldn't upgrade our defense this year because we don't have the cap space to do so and we essentially had our mediocre top 6 already locked down (save Nurse).

The Oilers hopes this season hinge on bounceback years from about half its roster since very few tangible improvements were made. That defense shouldn't scare anyone that isn't Oiler fans. How this has not been addressed in the last two offseasons is just unacceptable to me.

 

[shoop]

We saw something like this last season and if Klefbom bounces back this may not be too bad if Benning takes a step forward. That said if any of the top 4 has a tough go of it and none of Bouchard or Bear take a big step up in play we are in trouble. If that ends up being the case we need guys like Puljujarvi and Yamamoto to step up big and be like Toronto and try to outscore our defensive woes.

Larsson bounce back also needed. Hoping for pre-all star break Nurse. Think both will happen. Larsson had a tough season personally. It was Nurse's first full season in the league so he now knows the training and how to pace himself.

My guess is Bouchard takes the step. I would guess Davidson is signed as the 6/7 D.

As long as defence is good and if one of Puljujarvi or Yamamoto step up this is a playoff team. If the D is good and both Puljujarvi and Yamamoto step up and Koskinen is a good backup this could be better than the 2016-17 team.

Fully aware of how wishful my thinking is.

 

[BoldNewLettuce]

I know people think im crazy to say the league is fixing outcomes to grow the game in the us.....

....but doeant tying the salary cap to league revenue make the players invested in [mod] bettmans' growth strategy too....

Whats to stop the same playrrs that made john scott an mvp all star from throwing games ?

Hot take; theyre in the bushes and theyre out to get you.

 

[Dooman]

I feel like I just walked into a thread started by Replacement ?

 

[BlackDogg]

Have been thinking this exact thing - have little hope for this season the way its shaping up again. Sekera's injury just bounced this team from a bottom 12 to a bottom 6 I think. What a terrible waste of having #97 fall into his lap - surprised he didn't f*** that up somehow.

On a positive note, the prospects don't look bad - but way too early to determine if that is going to be the way out. It has to be though at this point. Don't think another shit ton years of looch is.

 

[Mr Positive]

For one, I disagree with that definition of insanity, or that it applies in our case.

There are cases such as with the Avalanche, where they keep things the same and simply let the team grow, and the team found success eventually with minimal changes and no real change in philosophy.

There is also this narrative that Chia screwed up in years past, and so this tied his hands this offseason. What specific move did we miss out on, that you are referring to? Signing Neal? No thanks. Or do we imagine that we'd sign Green somehow? Again, it seems like we wouldn't want to do that, but more importantly it looks like he wanted to stay in Detroit all along.

The parallel of the Sekera injury is not really a fair one too. It's not like it was the same injury as the last one, and it is not like he was established as injury prone, putting up full, productive seasons until his injury in 2017.

And ultimately, if there is one major issue that has gone on unaddressed for years under Chiarelli, it is the lack of an offensive Dman. It's now 4 years in a row without one.

I don't think that trading Eberle away is what destroyed our team's offensive capability. The decline in offense is more due to the team collapsing in many different ways, reducing the overall competiveness, and there was a carousel of different wingers tried so of course no single replacement could match Eberle's production here.

 

[McFlash97]

Theres nothing positive to say about a team with a bottom 3 defense core, bottom 3 winger core and bottom 10 goaltending heading into next season. This team will only go as far as number 97 and number 29 take them. Chiarelli very well may he the worst GM in NHL history.

God forbid if 97 goes down , this is a 15 win team

 

[Gordian Knot]

When PK is dead last in the league and PP is mediocre at the best combined with least PP chances per season and starting goalie isn’t winning any games for the team and backups can’t catch beach ball - I don’t know if we would be in playoffs with one Norris caliber defender and one 60-70 point winger last season. It isn’t solely the quality of the players. Golden Knights anyone?
It’s more about the coaching and what they can get out from the guys who are dressing those jerseys and if players are worth their paychecks.
Playoff teams have PP and PK in better half in the league stats, if team roster is weak like Oilers have, they should be in top 10 both. Still we need goalies winning few games for us.
Fail one of these and Art Ross winner isn’t pulling the his dead weight into playoffs.

 

[Drivesaitl]

I feel like I just walked into a thread started by Replacement ?

Interesting considering there hasn't been one in around 4years. You must have a long memory....

Maybe, just maybe, lots of people are seeing the same problems.

Good OP Cerebral!

 

[I am the Liquor]

We never won shit with Eberle. In fact no team he has ever played on ever won shit. That’s because he is shit. And you think our problems are related to that?

Whooo boy.......


But, other than that, sadly you are correct. The arrogant front office doesn’t think any significant changes are required. Kind of reminds me when they fired all the training and medical staff but the team itself continued to suck and blow.....

 

[KeithIsActuallyBad]

We never won **** with Eberle. In fact no team he has ever played on ever won ****. That’s because he is ****. And you think our problems are related to that?

Whooo boy.......

Well we got rid of him for a crappy "center" and sucked something fierce last year, so...

 

[The Panther]

I don't know, Chiareli can't really win, can he? The previous admin. were criticized, tarred-and-feathered, for doing basically nothing for a handful of years. Chiarelli then comes in, does a bunch of stuff including some ballsy moves, and he gets ripped for it.

I kind of (note the "kind of") admire Chiarelli's resolve in doing some of the moves he's done (Hall for Larsson, for instance). I just don't think he's been getting enough return for assets lost. That's where he looks like kind of an idiot.

Anyway, as everyone notes, the best thing now is just to sit tight, and not risk any further assets-lost due to dealing from a weak position. I do agree with the OP that the season's being a success really depends on a couple of players having break-out seasons. (And 'no', Bouchard should definitely not play this season!) I really like Ethan Bear's skating and puck-handling, so it could be him, even if he's still going through some hard-knocks getting used to NHL-level defense. If he develops quickly, and if both Nurse and Larsson are solid, the defence may be better than we're expecting -- which isn't to say it'll be good, but maybe it can aim for middle-of-the-pack.

But really, I think the power-play is key. If last season's disastrous team had just had a decent power-play, they'd have been close, despite everything else that went wrong. (I'm not overly worried about the penalty-kill, which wasn't that bad overall and will be better this year with new coaches, etc.) This is where Ethan Bear comes in, because I think he will a power-play specialist eventually. They desperately need a quarterback at the point who can also shoot hard and hit the net.

 

[Spawn]

I don't know, Chiareli can't really win, can he? The previous admin. were criticized, tarred-and-feathered, for doing basically nothing for a handful of years. Chiarelli then comes in, does a bunch of stuff including some ballsy moves, and he gets ripped for it.

I kind of (note the "kind of") admire Chiarelli's resolve in doing some of the moves he's done (Hall for Larsson, for instance). I just don't think he's been getting enough return for assets lost. That's where he looks like kind of an idiot.

Anyway, as everyone notes, the best thing now is just to sit tight, and not risk any further assets-lost due to dealing from a weak position. I do agree with the OP that the season's being a success really depends on a couple of players having break-out seasons. (And 'no', Bouchard should definitely not play this season!) I really like Ethan Bear's skating and puck-handling, so it could be him, even if he's still going through some hard-knocks getting used to NHL-level defense. If he develops quickly, and if both Nurse and Larsson are solid, the defence may be better than we're expecting -- which isn't to say it'll be good, but maybe it can aim for middle-of-the-pack.

But really, I think the power-play is key. If last season's disastrous team had just had a decent power-play, they'd have been close, despite everything else that went wrong. (I'm not overly worried about the penalty-kill, which wasn't that bad overall and will be better this year with new coaches, etc.) This is where Ethan Bear comes in, because I think he will a power-play specialist eventually. They desperately need a quarterback at the point who can also shoot hard and hit the net.

Sure he can... put together a roster that competes with the best in the league. Considering the situation he came into when he was hired, there are no excuses we are where we still are.

The two options are not:

"Get bent over in any big deal you make"

and

"Do nothing"

This is a false dichotomy some Oiler fans have created in order to defend the current management team.

Chia got ripped not because he made ballsy moves. He's gotten ripped because he's made bad moves. Franchise crippling moves. And now he's afraid or unwilling to try and fix the disaster he's created.

 

[Drivesaitl]

The interesting thing is it looks like ticket buyers are seeing much the same fortunes as the OP. ticket sales haven't been this bad for a longtime. Lots of tickets available to any game that have been unsold.

Not too optimistic with this lineup. Serious depth issues at forward. Sekera out longterm once again, Nurse not signed. That worries me too.

Outside of a handful of players there is no scoring on this roster. Even of those we have to hope Lucic ignites, that Nuge continues to have some success, and that hopefully Pulju wakes up. Even with all that happening we have 5 players that will have as many as 40pts (if that). Think about that. Who else in this lineup would even have an outside chance at 40pt season?

So that the thought of outscoring suspect D isn't something I'd be betting on either with this lineup.

 

[The Panther]

This is a false dichotomy some Oiler fans have created in order to defend the current management team.

Don't think I was defending the guy; I called him "idiotic"...

Anyway, people just need to have patience. I was personally quite satisfied with the 2015-16 season's progress in year 1 under McLellan and with McDavid. I was delighted with the team's progress in 2016-17. I was disappointed in 2017-18. But hey, two out of three satisfying seasons is better than any of the 9 years preceding that!

It doesn't need to be over-analyzed. Let's just cheer them on!

 

[Drivesaitl]

^How is it 2/3 satisfying seasons?

Next, how does anything significant that occurred in 15-16 have all that much to do with Chia. The org had acquired the McD pick, they had Drasaitl, Nurse, Klefbom, Sather essentially gave us Talbot. What am I missing? Sekera, Letestu, Russell? Were those really improvements?