Edmonton Oilers Blow Another Season, Need To Make Decisions.Part 1
With the season all but lost for the Oilers, what direction should they take? Should they try to appease the fans by making a high-profile trade or firing? Should they stay the course and hope for the best? Or should they purposefully tank? What about Leon, should he stay and get soaked up in the misery or should he go back and work on his skating and other skills? When a team is as terrible as the Oilers for as long as they have been, there are only difficult questions, and it is even harder to come up with the right answers. After all, if they knew the right way to go, they would not be where they are now.
Fan appeasing moves make no sense at this point. Getting rid of Justin Schultz or Nikita Nikitin will not get the team closer to the playoffs right now and will bring mediocre value back at best. Moving Sam Gagner last year was more of a pr move than a roster improvement, seeing as how MacTavish never got a replacement and the guy who came in return, Teddy Purcell has been just as awful. On another crowd pleaser, Freddy Chabot should have been let go during the summer, not 20 games into the season. Although it is early days for the new goalie coach and he might actually do a great job, the reality is that this move was made in haste and denied the organization of going out there and looking for the best possible man for the job. In fact firing anyone directly involved with the day today operations of the club would accomplish little and would handicap the choices of candidates. The same is not true for upper management and scouting though.
Staying the Course
Jun 27, 2014; Philadelphia, PA, USA; A general view of the complete draft board after the completion of the first round of the 2014 NHL Draft at Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
This may not be a popular idea, but given the lack of good choices in terms of trading away or signing free agents at this point in the season, perhaps the best for the Oilers is to maintain the course. Their secondary stats suggest a team being close to trading goals with the opposition and if the goaltending begins to improve like it has in the last 2 games, maybe the Oilers start making some progress. Then again, the easiest part of the schedule is bygone and starting today the Oilers will face a steady stream of strong western teams up until the first week of January, with only one respite in the form of the NY Rangers. We will see during this stretch if those underlying numbers were just a smoke screen or if the team’s play has actually improved.
Another reason for staying the course, sadly, is having a crack at Connor McDavid. He is being trumpeted as being even better than Sidney Crosby. A generational talent. And he happens to be a center. And at age 17, 6’1 and 187 Lbs, there is still a chance he might grow an extra inch or 2 and reach 200 Lbs. That should be good enough for him to be able to hold off the Western conference heavies. Some may think that Oil Country is sick and tired of talking about first overall picks, but in truth this is the only excitement this sorry organization leaves us looking forward to year after year since winter of 2009. Perhaps after all the losing and the disappointment, having Connor McDavid, or Jack Eichel or even Noah Hanifin , would be a much deserved acquisition, not for the organization but for it’s incredibly loyal fans. Personally, if the team is going to falter, I rather see them sink to the very bottom than being mediocre and end up somewhere in between 20-25th place. Either go for the playoffs or go for the best draft pick you can get. It makes little sense financially(games sell out anyways) and competitively (they are out of the playoffs already anyways) right now to suddenly have a surge and miss out on a once in a decade talent.
Then again, it is just painful to watch loss after loss and one has to wonder how much losing can Taylor Hall and company take. There are careers at stake here. In the case of upper management, Craig MacTavish and Kevin Lowe are already highly accomplished individuals. Maybe this is why they fail to understand how this sick cycle of losing is affecting players and lower management personnel. Take Dallas Eakins for example, on the one hand he got to play in the NHL, but on the other he never accomplished much and was a journeyman bouncing from one organization to another. Now in a coaching role he is looking for success, to win it all, to have that feeling Kevin Lowe so rightfully and so loudly reminded us of winning it all 6 times (lest we forget). Eakins and those in his crew yet to win a Stanley Cup would probably be content with tasting that just once.