Edmonton Oilers: How’s the division going to shake down?

4. Vancouver Canucks – the OEL nightmare

This offseason we saw a quintessential GM Jim Benning move that escapes all logic but somehow makes sense to him – the acquisition of Oliver Ekman-Larsson was the acquisition of a player who’s been on the decline for a long time now in exchange for three bad contracts that were all up after this season (OEL’s has six seasons left), and a top six left winger. Oh, and did I mention he sent the Coyotes a second round pick too? Benning, you got PLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYED like a fiddle. All to save just under $3 million in cap space for one season, and then cost cap space for the next five seasons after that. He would’ve been better off just keeping the three bad contracts in the long run, then using the $10 million or so in cap space they’d free up for the future.

You have to admire that level of managerial incompetence, because the Coyotes made out like bandits in this one.

How has Jim Benning not been fired yet in Vancouver? I’m starting to think he learned a little bit too much from Peter Chiarelli from their Boston days.

Garland was a decent pickup but I guarantee you OEL will do next to nothing in Vancouver. The rest of his moves will do nothing to move the rebuild forward – Jack Rathbone, Tucker Poolman, Vasily Podkolzin, and Jason Dickinson. Rathbone might do well in the future, but nothing in the short term. All these players are either generic vanilla types or prospects who won’t make much difference next season.

I guess I could talk about Jaroslav Halak, but at 36 he’s basically a lateral move from Braden Holtby. I pity Thatcher Demko because he’s in the same situation as John Gibson in Anaheim – might as well be a plastic dummy that’s used for target practice for all the shots that are going to be fired against him as they play behind a lousy team. At least Anaheim has some sort of a future to glimpse at, though. I see no such great future in Vancouver.

The only difference between the Canucks now and the Canucks last season is the subtraction of Alex Edler was a step in the right direction but they even managed to limber under that low bar by getting OEL to replace him. Now they have one of the biggest boat anchor contracts in OEL to “help” their rebuilding efforts.

Oh, and did I mention that Vancouver now has just under $11 million of cap space to sign two of their most important players in Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson?  Good luck with that.

Vancouver is a mess. In any other division, they would finish in last this upcoming season. Why hasn’t Jim Benning been fired yet?

Best case scenario – None.  This team is going nowhere fast. They’re the Calgary Flames with a different logo. No playoffs for them, but not drafting high enough to get an impact player to turn things around. Jim Benning’s idea of a rebuild continues. Wildcard spot maybe?

Worst case scenario – They somehow manage to fail worse than Seattle and San Jose will and actually finish last in the division.

What are they to the Oilers? Meat shields extraordinaire. A Yugo to Edmonton’s cadillac.