The Oilers Are Still the Worst Team in the NHL at Developing Players

[Oi'll say!]

I wonder if Darryl Katz has his kid in a private school, has a tutor for him, or just lets him go to the local catchment school and let the chips fall where they may...

Based on the type of instruction that his assets in the NHL are receiving I would believe he is letting his kid be raised by wolves.

By now there would be some very tangible results if Gagner,Dubnyk, Petry, Schultz, Yakupov, Hall and RNH were receiving solid NHL coaching. Instead the learning curve for all of those players is pointing doowwwn.

This is such a critical phase in the development of these kids, the Oilers can't afford to lose another crop of rookies. Eakins had an extra 40 games last season, giving him training camp this year was a colossal mistake. If the Oilers trade Petry before they unload Eakins AND MacT I'm done watching the Oilers until even KLo is gone.

I tell people that I'm barely an oiler fan anymore. It kills me to be disloyal to the team but I am no fan of the gongshow that the Oilers have become. The lack of class that MacT and KLo have shown since the days when they started publicly chastising York et al has eventually turned into this.

Im a week or two from taking most of my Oilers gear to the thrift store.

Click to read more...

 

[Jumptheshark]

yeap

and people ask why I get grumpy when the oilers have kids like Leon and Nurse around the team when they should be getting fully developed in junior

 

[Cold Dome Beers]

solid NHL coaching

got your answer right there bud.

Similar sort of concept flies in university. I tend to do better in a class and get more involved in it if my professor cares about how I do. Eakins doesn't seem to have much desire to be successful, and if he does, he's not showing it.

 

[Blue And Orange]

You can place all the blame on the players for their development or lack thereof, but when a young player is put in an environment void of success, it will take a negative toll on them.

Cogliano must be counting his blessings the day he got traded to Anaheim for a measly 2nd rounder. Had he stayed in Edmonton, I'm not sure if he would still be in the NHL right now. Him moving to Anaheim essentially rejeuvenated his career.

I could even say the same thing for Stoll and Greene. Stoll was coming off a bad year in 2007-08 and we essentially ran him out of town, only for him to become a critical member of the LA Kings dynasty.

 

[Mr Positive]

The only reason we are still bad at development is because development is critical at the NHL level. There have been some good prospects to hit the big club, but it's hard for them to remain confident and focused when they're here. As a result, an NHL ready player like Draisaitl will probably go to Europe to develop, whereas if he were on a team like the Sharks they would make room for him and they could effectively shelter him while propping him up a bit.

I think most fans are understanding of this though. If Nurse has a bad game I think most fans instantly forgive him for it, but it's still tough on him regardless.

 

[voxel]

We fans got what we deserved. We wanted the kids to play and yep their development hit early walls.

I think LD is ready for the NHL but should not play with the Oil this year solely because he needs to learn how to dominate lower levels so when he returns he can domainte in the NHL.

 

[Tyrolean]

Bottom line is despite a woeful record the team is consistently generating a profit for Katz. We've seen this situation with other teams like the Leafs. Short of a boycott, what can fans really do to effect changes?

 

[Blue And Orange]

Bottom line is despite a woeful record the team is consistently generating a profit for Katz. We've seen this situation with other teams like the Leafs. Short of a boycott, what can fans really do to effect changes?

 

[plikestechno]

Yes. We are the absolute worst. It's almost hard to be mad at the players sometimes knowing that they would be better on other teams.

Nothing will change until people stop going to games en masse. At which point Katz will probably move or sell the team and blame us for not supporting them.

 

[Joey Moss]

I think some people are missing the point.. Since Nuge, Eberle and Hall have been here they've been coached by 3 different people. Yakupov and Schultz have had two different coaches and they've only played ~130 NHL games. This can't be good for their development. Being taught new systems and told different things every year is not the way to develop your players. Now that Eakins is here I'm sure they're washed up and don't know what to think anymore. The team needs a strong developmental coach with experience and a good track record that the players can trust. Eakins is far from that. When you have a young team with a very inexperienced coach who doesn't even have full confidence in himself that's a recipe for disaster.

And of course this all starts in management who clearly can't see this. We're doomed until they're gone.

 

[Blue And Orange]

Yes. We are the absolute worst. It's almost hard to be mad at the players sometimes knowing that they would be better on other teams.

Nothing will change until people stop going to games en masse. At which point Katz will probably move or sell the team and blame us for not supporting them.

Katz can't move the team. I believe he's legally unable to move the team until at least the year 2051 (36 years after the new arena opens).

However, fans can boycott and stop supporting them financially. I think it would send a strong message. Right now, it's inevitable that they'll realize fan backlash and start changing things.

 

[Phenomenon13]

I remember the last wave of promising young guns in Cogliano, Gagner and Schremp. None of which remain.


Even Paajarvi got shipped out early.


No player is truly bust proof but the Oilers seem rather poor at developing their promising players.

 

[The Human Torch]

The Oilers are the worst team in the NHL at a lot of things. Most things, actually.

WORST AT ALL THE THINGS.

 

[Dolemite]

This is something I've been saying for a few years now. They need to fix this now.

 

[Hockey Nightmare]

The oilers are the best team in the NHL at being terrible.

 

[bsjezz]

I think some people are missing the point.. Since Nuge, Eberle and Hall have been here they've been coached by 3 different people. Yakupov and Schultz have had two different coaches and they've only played ~130 NHL games. This can't be good for their development. Being taught new systems and told different things every year is not the way to develop your players. Now that Eakins is here I'm sure they're washed up and don't know what to think anymore. The team needs a strong developmental coach with experience and a good track record that the players can trust. Eakins is far from that. When you have a young team with a very inexperienced coach who doesn't even have full confidence in himself that's a recipe for disaster.

And of course this all starts in management who clearly can't see this. We're doomed until they're gone.

i'm not sure that's a good case. in many other organizations, prospects would see three coaches and three systems in three years commonly; from a post-draft year in junior, to an AHL squad, to the NHL, and often back again. consistency is not the problem here.

i think more on the money are arguments that coaching matters, but it's not the head coach that's overly problematic here. more than anything else rookies learn from the veteran players around them, and this off-ice, locker room coaching is as vital as anything - though it's less open to public scrutiny and commentary. i just keep asking myself who hall or RNH or nurse or yakupov have come up in the shadow of, who these kids ever placed their respect in. i don't see that it's really happened.

a good comparison immediately at hand is brodie and giodarno in calgary. now, say what you want about that team, but that's a very good pairing. brodie's been up and down in the AHL, he has had time to see different perspectives on the professional game, and he's now been placed in a context - only once he'd earned it - of sustained time in a high-responsibility role where he can meaningfully develop his own game, with a model to aspire to

is it too late to undo this developmental damage? i don't know. but with guys like nurse and draisatl, the organization really needs to think about these things now, as the damage of ignoring it in the past is not particularly hard to see

 

[MarkGio]

i'm not sure that's a good case. in many other organizations, prospects would see three coaches and three systems in three years commonly; from a post-draft year in junior, to an AHL squad, to the NHL, and often back again. consistency is not the problem here.

i think more on the money are arguments that coaching matters, but it's not the head coach that's overly problematic here. more than anything else rookies learn from the veteran players around them, and this off-ice, locker room coaching is as vital as anything - though it's less open to public scrutiny and commentary. i just keep asking myself who hall or RNH or nurse or yakupov have come up in the shadow of, who these kids ever placed their respect in. i don't see that it's really happened.

a good comparison immediately at hand is brodie and giodarno in calgary. now, say what you want about that team, but that's a very good pairing. brodie's been up and down in the AHL, he has had time to see different perspectives on the professional game, and he's now been placed in a context - only once he'd earned it - of sustained time in a high-responsibility role where he can meaningfully develop his own game, with a model to aspire to

is it too late to undo this developmental damage? i don't know. but with guys like nurse and draisatl, the organization really needs to think about these things now, as
the damage of ignoring it in the past is not particularly hard to see

The Flames have had the privileged of sheltering Brodie behind the likes of Bouwmeester and Giordano, whereas the Oilers had no choice but to throw Schultz to the wolves when he became almost instantly the Oilers best defenseman. Brodie is the same age as Schultz and Brodie is undoubtedly a top pairing defenseman now, whereas Schultz is starting to regress, perhaps even out of the top 4.

But Brodie's development came at the cost of Butler having to eat minutes above his head. Having the grand plan going unnoticed by the fans, it drove us crazy to watch Butler eat minutes that made no sense. Which goes to show that development is the long term play. Flames are doing the same with Ferland, Reinhart, Granlund, Wotherspoon, etc and instead are icing bums like Jones, Engelland, Bollig, etc.

Brad Hunt and Leon Drasaitl shouldn't be playing on the team yet, nor should Nurse. But could the fans be patient enough to watch guys like Lander and Pitlick play minutes when games are on the line?