Oilers: Looking at how the Lightning were constructed
The Tampa Bay Lightning are poised to win back-to-back championships tonight in Montreal. Being up 3-0 in the series, it is only a matter of time before the Lightning are celebrating a championship. Today I want to look at how the Oilers can get their following a similar path.
Looking at the makeup of a roster can help showcase how the Lightning have gotten where they are today. As of right now, their roster is made up of players signed during free agency, traded for at some point in the past, and a lot of players they drafted internally at the draft. So what is the specific makeup of the team?
Drafted – Kucherov, Stamkos, Point, Palat, Cirelli, Killorn, Stephens, Joseph, Raddysh, Katchouk, Colton, Hedman, Thomas, Foote, and Vasilevskiy.
Traded – Walcott, Goodrow, Coleman, McDonagh, Sergachev, Cernak, Rutta, Claesson, and Savard.
Signed – Gourde, Johnson, Maroon, Smith, Barre-Boulet, Schenn, Martin, Gibson, and McElhinney.
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All of these lists are pretty good. The players this organization drafted that are now leading their lineup are amazing. The fact that the team managed to draft Brayden point in the third round is crazy and they have so many different game-changers on their roster that they added in the draft. This is how you want to build a team.
The players they have traded for have also been nice additions. Most of their defence was added through trades outside of Hedman. Guys like Ryan McDonagh, Mikhail Sergachev, and Jan Rutta all are playing ion big critical roles now were added at the draft.
This team might be over the cap next season but they did manage to build a pretty impressive roster on paper. So what does this mean for the Oilers? I think they could still use some more help on the back end and with some more depth forwards. Guys like Yanni Gourde, Blake Coleman, and even fourth-liners like Pat Maroon and company are finding ways to help the Lightning now in the playoffs.
Edmonton is missing out on guys like that. They have as good of talent if not better than Tampa with their top couple guys. Kucherov and Stamkos is around the same level as McDavid and Draisaitl. The only difference is the way the Lightning have gone out and added other players to make their bottom-six productive as well.
To be fair any team that gets a guy like Brayden Point with their third-round pick is destined to win some championships. That guy is amazing with 14 goals and 9 assists through 21 games thus far.