Where exactly did the rebuild go wrong?

[AM]

Lowe and MacT took a trip to Seattle with Katz, where they threatened to move the Oilers. This ploy helped blackmail the city into buying a new arena, using taxpayer dollars.

Katz doesn't care about hockey fans or the citizens of Edmonton. He only cares about money. Katz guaranteed Lowe and MacT jobs for life because they helped make him billions.

How would you run a business? Just roll over when your competitors are getting "gifts" from the politicos in their market?

What Katz did was a business move and it worked. Course, if they would have called his bluff, they probably would have been hung in effigy around here.

 

[AM]

The Oilers had an inactive AHL franchise from 2005 to 2010. The development of the Oilers prospects were, IMO, stunted during that time. I believe this move it pushed back the Oilers organization at least 10 years just to catch up to that blunder. I believe this had a huge impact that resulted in a decade of failure.

Likely the biggest single contributor right here.

 

[Jet Walters]

I was never a fan of paying three players top line money who were not a fit as a top line. Not to say they all didn't individually earn those deals, but it was like the Oilers tried to force-feed them to us as a #1 line when they needed linemates with different strengths to bring out the best in them.

 

[BadMedicine*]

In 2009 Management refused to listen to Pat Quinn....they railroaded him when he had introduced them to the NewAge Possesion/Transition Philosophy which the Kings-Hawks-Blues-Isles-Rangers-Flames -Pens ect use and which has been winning every Stanley Cup since 2012....5 and counting.Krueger and Renney both were 86ed for trying while under pressure from management to keep their team current and evolving and competative which meant FOLLOWING the same philosophies and tactics Pat Quinn supported and which the Kings and Hawks eventually copied from them and fully embraced ,teams who were winning games and Cups .

The Oil should have been a Playoff Team since 2010..... but as history shows instead the Kings in 2012 followed Pat Quinns cutting edge forward-thinking NewAge focuses followed by the Hawks in 2013 the Blues and Flames in 2014 and Rangers and Isles in 2015 and Pens in 2016.The Oilers HAD POSSESION of what became the NHLs most cutting edge evolutionary philosophy and System back in 2009 and they voluntarily surrendered possesion of it or as some believe were waylayed from by Advanced- Stats influences , and then refused to join the NHL in evolving themselves....instead choosing to retreat behind denial projected as a monumental ever-growing wall of statistical excusatory supports.

 

[tiger_80]

A whole succession of bad top level decisions (appointment of Tambellini, MacTavish, Eakins), and bad draft years (RNH and Yakupov are more like top 5-top 10 picks. Even Hall is not as good as some other 1st overall. Then systemic failure to build the proper team (no good bottom 6, lack of top 4 d-men, expensive over the hill players like Ference or gambles like Nikitin).

Now it's essentially MacDavid-Draisaitl core. The rest of the old group will be traded to bring in players who would be better compliment the younger talent.

 

[Up the Irons]

What angers me the most though is that the problems could be seen years before any significant changes were made to the organizational operations. Why was it allowed to continue for as long as it did when it was obvious big changes were needed? Worse though is why Katz publicly defended these people when the fan base started to complain?

nailed it. they were at odds with basic business practices, and it was obvious to... well, to everyone.

To get an idea of how bad that pick was, think of it this way, Mikhnov played 2 games in the NHL, the combined games total of the remaining picks in the first round following that pick is 6,608 NHL games, with an average of 508 games.

WOW. just... WOW!!!!

 

[Jumptheshark]

I lost respect for the organization in how they treated Quinn and the squeezed out Renney cause he did not want to rush the kids

 

[NegativeNelly]

If Katz owned NASA, and hired Lowe, MacT and Howson to build his rockets, I'm sure the effort would be there but at the end of the day the rockets would all crash. Perhaps they could figure out how to build one in 20 years? Most owners wouldn't want to wait that long for results.

Also, doesn't MacT have a business degree? Yet Lowe doesn't and Lowe is on the "business" side and likes to hang out at the draft table to conduct his "business side". I'm convinced Lowe still makes alot of decisions and has way too much influence over hockey ops, regardless of the title changes last year.

 

[rboomercat90]

Not sure where to put this so I figured I put it here. Mods can move it or delete it if they need to.

Marek was on Sportsnet the other day. He was talking about Tyler Dellow and mentioned that he's working for the Oilers. Is this true? I thought Dellow left after Eakins was fired.