Edmonton Oilers: Peter Chiarelli’s NHL Career is Over

Edmonton Oilers fans have endured enough stupid trades that have kept the team on the verge of becoming contenders for far too long.

For many, the acquisition of Brandon Manning was the tipping point, and a loss to the last-place Detroit Red Wings just put it over the edge. After four years, Peter Chiarelli has been fired from the Edmonton Oilers — and will not have another General Manager job in the NHL again.

Believe it or not, this piece is tough for me to write. Growing up a Boston Bruins fan, I idolized the man who constructed the roster that would bring my childhood team its first Stanley Cup in almost 40 years.

However, I do believe Peter Chiarelli hindered the Bruins potential to continue to be a sustainable powerhouse for the next decade when he moved on from Tyler Seguin in 2013. Sure they have a lot of young talent now, and the team is still having success.

But that young talent could have been the supporting cast for a future Stanley Cup contender led by Seguin and David Pastrnak. Not only right now but continued dominance years after the likes of Patrice Bergeron, Zdeno Chara, and David Krejci are all long gone.

Many were ecstatic when the Oilers hired Chiarelli as the club’s GM and President of Hockey Operations. Why wouldn’t they be? They knew the team was going to be drafting a generational talent in Connor Mcdavid that June, and now they have a guy who has won a Stanley Cup and had a reputation as one of the most respected General Managers in hockey in charge of building the supporting cast.

It seemed as though the last decade of failure was now nothing more than a long lost memory.

But as everyone knows, that would not be the case.

The Moves Really Were That Bad

It’s hard to think of any General Manager that has made any moves in the last four years nearly as cataphoric to the success of their franchise’s success as the moves made by Chiarelli… let alone multiple of them. Shea Weber for P.K Subban will probably turn out to be a close second to the Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson trade regarding future success. But what other team has recently moved a piece that big and lost that badly?

Any manager as seasoned as Chiarelli at the NHL position should have been well aware that 2015 was not the year to move a first-round draft pick. It’s pretty safe to say that the draft class following Mcdavid will go down as the deepest first round since the infamous draft of 2003.

But instead of snatching up one of the plentiful top prospects in Mathew Barzal, Thomas Chabot, Kyle Connor… oh and Brock Boeser (just to name a few) available with the 16th pick; Chiarelli decided to package that pick with the 33rd overall pick to the New York Islanders in exchange for Griffin Reinhart. A defencemen who was struggling to make a permanent jump up from the AHL and had well-known footspeed issues.

I should also mention that Brandon Carlo was available with the 33rd pick that year, who was drafted by Boston at 37th and played in their top 4 the following season and is still providing solid minutes.

If the Bruins selected Carlo, there is no way that Chiarelli didn’t have a multitude of conversations with his scouts when still in Boston about that player– Considering the Bruins let him go just months before the draft.

Maybe he didn’t think Carlo would slide to the second round? But pick 33 was not far out of Carlo’s range and there were still plenty of other talented players available in the second round of 2015.

More Has To Come

One man cannot single-handedly make a franchise that was gifted the number one talent of this generation this bad, can he? It has been widely reported that these recent moves were made by consensus decisions in the organization, with Craig MacTavish essentially breathing over Chiarelli’s shoulder.

So who are the pro scouts that watched Manning and said he’d be a viable stop-gap for an injured defense core? Or watched Tobias Reider and deemed he might be able to provide some offensive options in the teams forward group?

From the analytics personnel that might have missed sufficient evidence that these players are not having success in these areas of the game or that players careers have been trending downward. To the apologist’s that couldn’t convince Chiarelli that these moves would be strapping the Oilers for cap space for years to come. You can go on and on.

The Oilers are going to have to make a lot of tough decisions throughout all levels of the organization to see any changes. Chiarelli is without a doubt where you start, but it is imperative that MacTavish and Kevin Lowe follow him out the door this summer; along with the rest of the personnel who have contributed to Edmonton being the laughing stock of the league for well over a decade.

The new guy will have a handful of barriers left by his predecessor.

Here’s to hoping this organization will finally figure it out.