2014 Edmonton Oilers rookies: the vanguard

Jun 27, 2014; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Leon Draisaitl puts on a team sweater after being selected as the number three overall pick to the Edmonton Oilers in the first round of the 2014 NHL Draft at Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

The Oilers have been shallow in all positions for a while now. Despite having the first overall pick 3 years in a row and having selected in the top 10 for 7 of the last 8 years, the barracks remain a revolving door for rookies. The team has managed to go above .500 in points only twice in that period. That’s right, fans seem to enjoy watching a team lose more than half the time, since Rexall Place has been filled during the same span. Unless MacTavish’s strategy is to build the entire roster out of first round draft picks, the later rounds need to start bearing fruit.

Will the current list of hopefuls finally reveal some depth? Did anyone from last year’s group take a step forward? Let’s take a quick look:

2013:

Cameron Abney. 3^rd round pick back in 2009, he was traded to the Leafs for Mark Fraser and Teemu Hartikainen last January. Neither man is on an NHL organization this pre-season. Abney seems to be a FA as of this writing.

Brandon Baddock. Camp invite last year, former Oil King was drafted this summer by the New Jersey Devils.

Ty Bilcke. Camp invite last year, remains undrafted. Signed an ATO (amateur tryout) with the Leafs this summer and is at their rookie camp.

Greg Chase. 7th round pick in 2013 looks like the biggest steal since Jordan Eberle, posting solid numbers last year. The fact that he was taken right from underneath the Flames’ noses makes this pick even sweeter. Top prospect for sure. The Oilers just signed him to a 3 year entry-level deal.

Travis Ewanyk. 3^rd round in 2011 he had an unspectacular first year as a pro down at the farm.

Austin Fyten. Camp invite last year. The Barons saw enough to offer him a one year contract. He is now with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms , the Flyers AHL farm team and is also attending Philly’s rookie camp. I think Fyten is a better player than Curtis Hamilton, although it’s a bit of a moot point since both are not much better than career depth AHLers at this point.

Jackson Houck. 4^th round pick in 2013. Solid prospect continues to improve, scoring 11 more goals in 213 than he did in 2012.

Kale Kessy. 4^th round pick by Phoenix in 2011. One of the last jalapenos Tambellini made us bite on was the trade of Tobias Rieder for this Kessy fellow. Not only did he send away a player galaxies apart in terms of skill thanks to the bring in coke machines mentality (Tobias’ stats here) but he wasted a spot on the 50 man list by signing Kessy in April 2013, as a final middle finger to Edmonton before he got canned just 9 days later as we officially found out on the day of Kevin Lowe’s hara-kiri.

Jujhar Khaira. 3^rd round selection in 2012. Decided to leave college for Major Junior hockey in order to be eligible to attend pro camps and had a brief cameo with the Barons late last season. Has size, speed and aggression but there are some question marks about his finishing ability. If he finds his scoring touch, he’ll be a top prospect

Andrew Miller. Undrafted college FA,I believe he was the very first transaction in the MacTavish era. He inked a one year entry-level deal after topping off an outstanding college career with Yale by leading his team to the NCAA championship that spring. Didn’t do much in his first year as a pro, but he has one more year to prove himself.

Mitchell Moroz. 2012 2^nd round pick. Enforcer, power forward, agitator, the Oil kings keep on giving with 16 players drafted since 2009. For comparison, the other memorial cup finalist of 2014, the Guelph Storm, has had 17 players drafted in the same period. Top prospect.

Reid Petryk. Undrafted camp invite, finished his Major Junior career with a memorial cup championship playing for the Oil kings. This blogger from Colorado seems to think Petryk will get a shot at the AVS training camp this year.

Kyle Platzer. 4^th rounder from 2013. He showed underwhelming offensive numbers and not much in the way of size or aggression. Looks like another wasted pick.

Marco Roy. 2^nd round pick of 2013. Marco has promising skill but is undersized. There might be a top prospect here. He was slowed down by injury last season, so there is a ton of upside for him to go.

Chase Schaber. Undrafted. He signed a one year deal with the Bakersfield Condors last year after attending Oilers and Barons camps. The Condors offered another year so Schaber will stay for this coming season. Looks like a career in the minor pro leagues for him7888.

2014:

The new faces:

Mitch Holmberg. Undrafted, he signed an AHL SPO to play with the barons for the upcoming season. Small guy with plenty of skill exploded for points last season in Junior hockey. Good depth guy if he can show defensive prowess.

Josh Winquist. Undrafted, in the same boat as Holmberg. Similar type of player in both size and skill.

Bogdan Yakimov. 3^rd rounder from 2013. Biggest forward in the whole organization. He has already played against men in the KHL and he will probably stick around with Oklahoma for next season. He might even push someone for a job at the main training camp because he is not a coke machine, he actually has skill although he looked a bit slow on the first game at Penticton. This is my dark horse for training camp. Top prospect indeed.

Leon Draisaitl. Only first round pick at this camp (forwards). The latest fruit of another season of futility for the Oilers. He will most likely get a job out of training camp given the sorry depth at center, although he would probably be best served to go back to Junior for one more year. I would prefer to see Yakimov on a third line with Arcobello on the second line and Gordon and Lander on the 4^th with Hendricks this year. The top forward prospect of the crop.

Vladimir Tkachev. Undrafted camp invite. Tiny forward with great offensive skills and showed great back checking on the prospects game against the Canucks. He overflows with talent, but size is definitively a concern given the behemoths patrolling the ice in the pacific division. Then again, featherweight fighters like Manny Pacquiao are tiny, but tough as nails and solid as a concrete wall.

Alex Krushelnisky. Another undrafted camp invite. Finished his college career with underwhelming numbers. Given the superior skill of other small prospects on the list, it seems hard for him to grab a spot for the season, maybe at the ECHL level.

Connor and Kellen Jones. 7^th round draft pick Kellen and his twin brother Connor are yet 2 more small skilled forwards with tons of competition in an organization looking for size upfront. Time is not on their side, but they have one year to make an impression.

By my count, there are 5 top prospects (if they stay on track they have a great chance at being in the NHL): Leon, Big Yak, Khaira, Moroz and Chase; and 2 solid prospects who could find themselves on the big club if the right circumstances arise: Houck and Roy. Andrew Miller was a bit disappointing and Ewanyk seems to be stuck in a rut. Overall this group has a better mix of size and skill and for what I saw on the first prospects game the emphasis in the development seems to be on making back checking a habit. I didn’t really see anyone staying behind, they weren’t just playing with energy, they were moving around with a purpose. Credit to Todd Nelson and his staff for reaching the guys with a style of play in such a short period of time.

The facts that half of the guys from last year are gone and didn’t graduate to higher ranks and the current crop is at least one year away from producing a solid NHL contributor shows how barren the farm has been in the past years. Outside the first round picks only the following forwards have seen more than a handful of games in the NHL since 2003: Jacques, Stortini and Brodziak from the 2003 draft class; Liam Reddox from 2004; VandeVelde from 2005; Omark from 2007, Hartikainen from 2008; Anton Lander from 2009, and; Tyler Pitlick from 2010. Not one of these men has been better than top nine, and only Brodziak has had a decent career. Lander and Pitlick have one last at bat, but at best they will be on the 4^th line.

We tend to make a lot of noise about the lack of NHL talent on the main lineup, but when we take a step back and look at the whole picture, the abysmal lack of depth at all of the forward positions offers a good explanation as to why the Oilers seem to go nowhere year in and year out despite the top end talent of the top 6. They seem to have finally figured things out though, and if things go right, there could be as many as 7 prospect forwards playing for the Oilers within the next 3 years. The trick is to make the right decisions for their development, do solid drafting to replenish the stock every year, and keep a good training system like what we’ve seen in OKC.

After trying to build a skyscraper on a foundation of cards, the Oilers may have finally realized they need to pour concrete before hanging a chandelier.