I don't at all share the sentiment of the OP's post, we've had some prospects that have showed some positive signs or as Lowetide would say some up arrows, but I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch. So many times I've seen people stoked about how great our future was cause of all the prospects we had boiling under, only for significant disappointment after the fact. The fact of the matter is so far our drafting in the Chia era has only provided us one real legitimate NHL player and I've seen us have better prospect quality and depth in the past, that still didn't materialize into much quality NHL talent.
The next step to me isn't NHL success, but AHL success, while some may be able to skip that step we have some prospects who should require some AHL seasoning and they need to ply their craft there and dominate there, before I can muster any excitement about what there NHL future could potentially be. Last year we had scarcely anyone worthy of even a sideways glance at a chance at NHL employment, our AHL squad was absolutely terrible in terms of providing our NHL team with quality depth to draw from.
We have two primary driving forces in the Oiler's organization, McDavid the greatest player in the game today who uplifts the teammates around him and Chiarelli, whose incompetence borders on deliberate sabotage. To date I'd say Chia's capacity for sabotage has exceeded McDavid's ability to uplift those around him. I think Chia can make some good moves, I think he can restore some peoples faith in him, but ultimately this is a parasite or poison in our blood who will invariably make us weaker over the long term and I can't see us having any sustained success with him as the GM.