I'm very concerned with having Chiarelli as a GM. Yeah blah blah first time in playoffs in over a decade, but how much of this was him being a good GM and how much of it was the natural progression of players like McDavid and Draisaitl? Sure he has made some good moves like Talbot, Maroon, and Kassian, but besides Talbot, most of his moves are either low impact depth moves, failure to extract value (Hall for Larsson, Eberle for Strome), and moves that set the team back significantly (Reinhart trade).
The guys just doesn't seem to have patience and caves easily to other GMs'/players' demands instead of waiting for better offers or negotiating proper figures on contracts. I mean I like Larsson, but you can't tell me he's the best defenceman we could've possibly gotten for Hall. Multiple GMs have stated that they would have beaten the Devils' deal. But nope, instead of shopping one of the Oilers' most valuable assets, he tunnel visions on Larsson. His abysmal cap management skills is even more alarming considering we'll be a cap team for the foreseeable future. Seriously. does every player have pictures of Chiarelli naked or something? How does Boston lock up Pastrnak for less than 7 million and we have to pay Draisaitl, who is only slightly better, over 8.5 million? And the sad thing is Draisaitl's contract is one of the more stomachable ones, at least he's going to be a franchise cornerstone. Handing out idiotic contracts like Kris Russell 4x4, Milan Lucic 6x7, complete with NMCs, then unnecessarily buying out Pouliot when we had more than enough cap space to just bury him in the minors, are potentially franchise crippling moves.
Peter Chiarelli is a significantly better GM than Steve Tambellini and Craig MacTavish. But that doesn't make him a good GM. Instead of blindingly defending his moves, we need to consider if he's the right guy for the job moving forward.
PS. If he signs Chris "worst player on worst 4th line in the league last year" Kelly and cuts into the minutes of our developing players, I'm going to be very annoyed.