When will the Oilers become serious about winning?

[ZenOil]

When Chia's smell wears off.

 

[Trafalgar Sadge Law]

Montour went from looking good in Anaheim to leading Buffalo in +/- 2 years ago with a +13 on a team whose offense fell off a cliff under Ralph Kreuger to looking bad this year. And then suddenly good again with the Panthers. I haven't quite given up on him yet. As for Risto that poor bastard gets thrown to the wolves more than any player I think I've ever seen. I actually pity him.

Larsson's "Girardi" comparison is actually very good. Kudos on that.

When I see Oiler games I as an outsider see how it comes from the fact that Klefbom is repeatedly injured and he is asked to shoulder the load of the team in every situation imaginable for long periods of time. He's spent maybe 1/4 of his Oiler career with his best help being Kris Russell, the inconsistent Darnell Nurse and the corpse of Andrej Sekera. Not to mention the Oilers bottom 6 has been probably amongst the worst in the NHL for how many years. There is no support for the defense outside of McDavid/Draisaitl carrying the play and some nights it's the only thing keeping the defense from running fire drills all night. Larsson suffers from a far lesser degree of Risto syndrome if you ask me. I think if you got him some help you'd see a big improvement from him.

But I digress on the issue as Montour was simply an idea at best. There's a lot of room to agree to disagree there ya know? I do think the Oilers need one more guy. Klefbom is fantastic but the guy would break his hand tying his skates. I don't think walking away from Larsson is gonna help. Nurse is not ready to take the next step in my eyes, Russell is on his last legs and the defense market is kinda "yeeesssshhhh" I don't think the Oilers can walk away from him.

RNH at a discount is still a hard pass. I love watching the Oilers because they're on late and I work late (11pm EST) but I watch the guy and I just see nothing that he offers you guys but the fact he's been there and beloved by the fanbase. It reminds me of Gerald McCoy with the Buccaneers but even then the guy was arguably the best defensive tackle in the NFL at a point in his career and I can't say that about RNH. The first thing Bruce Arians did was let him go and the commonly accepted theory is that McCoy harbored too much of a losing mentality for our locker room to take the next step. Unless I met RNH myself it's gonna be hard to buck me off thinking that of him.





Now let me bounce this off of you. Matt Dumba has allegedly been available for like.... ever. Do you pull the trigger on him then? I'm sorry but that defense still needs help and I say that with all the love in my heart for you guys.

I'm fine with picking up a Brandon Montour/Matt Dumba type player if the price is reasonable tbh on one of those "rebuild your value" type deals we gave Turris/Kahun/Barrie this year, obviously there's a larger chance they end up closer to a Kahun than they do a Barrie but it's worth the risk for 1 year. I definitely wouldn't commit term to players like this though.

 

[Trafalgar Sadge Law]

Whats your thoughts on Nurse then?

He gets caved away from McDavid.

44.79% SCF this year away from McDavid.

Literally everyone gets caved away from McDrai, literally everyone, that's what happens when the team has no depth/talent. Nurse's QoC is also far more difficult than Adam "shutdown dman" Larsson, and he plays with the adventure that is Barrie. Nurse also has better analytics both with and away from McDavid compared to Larsson. I think Oilers fans overrate Nurse calling him a #1 dman/Norris candidate but he's clearly a good player.

 

[redgrant]

You mean a guy who's built teams that can't win a playoff round?

Hes put together a solid team with no useless James Neals and Kris Russells eating up 10 million in cap space. Its only a matter of time for Toronto. I would feel much more comfortable with a roster like that built solid from top to bottom.

We need a progressive GM not someone that is living in the 1990s.

 

[Tobias Kahun]

Literally everyone gets caved away from McDrai, literally everyone, that's what happens when the team has no depth/talent. Nurse's QoC is also far more difficult than Adam "shutdown dman" Larsson, and he plays with the adventure that is Barrie. Nurse also has better analytics both with and away from McDavid compared to Larsson. I think Oilers fans overrate Nurse calling him a #1 dman/Norris candidate but he's clearly a good player.

I agree he's a good player.

I was more so commenting on your Larsson analytics when clearly everyone on the Oilers sucks away from McDrai, and Nurse gets by far the heaviest push with McDrai, as he should.

Nurse also starts in the offensive zone far more often than Larsson.

55% to 37%.