In Ken Holland we have a guy who has built Cup winners in both the pre and post salary cap era. We have a GM who has built a prospect pipeline between the minors and the NHL team, and has brought a lot of those people with him to Edmonton.
I’m not saying he’s perfect, far from it, but he’s a guy with a past record of success, so if he doesn’t believe now is a good time to go all-in then perhaps we should give him that latitude.
After all, considering the success that Detroit has from the early 90s to the next 20 years after, I’m willing to bet if you ask Holland he’ll tell you he’s trying to establish the same pipeline here that he had in Detroit, so that the Edmonton Oilers can have long term success. This means rather than risking it all for one cup win, we have a little more patience and in the long term we can have two or three cup wins. Or four or five.
The point is that you shouldn’t be concerned with how long the two superstars have been here. You can bet Holland has an open door with the core players, so they’re on board with what he’s doing here. Mcdavid doesn’t like losing, but if he’s on board with the plan and he understands once he takes some time to recover from the losing, the winning is all the more sweeter. You can bet that Mcdavid would rather have multiple cups than just one.
It’s also worth noting that Pittsburgh, Chicago, and LA have all duplicated what Holland did while he was GM of Detroit. Those three teams virtually dominated the league from 2009-2017.
Tampa Bay is doing that right now, having won the last two cups largely to good drafting and shrewd trades and signings (sound familiar?).
Why couldn’t Edmonton be next? There’s no reason it couldn’t happen.
But it’s also important to remember that this team has only in the last couple of seasons recovered from horrible drafting that happened from 1982-2015. That’s a long time for the prospect cupboards to go bare – and is the main reason why the rebuild took 13 years instead of five.
So stop going bipolar Oilers fan – I’ve said that before but I really can’t say it enough. Holland has a decent pulse on his team and the league, and he’s only the second GM in team history with a decent drafting record.
Not to mention he’s only been at the helm for three years.
It’s also important to remember it took Alex Ovechkin 13 years to win a cup in Washington. Mcdavid isn’t close to that yet.
The Oilers are baking their winning cake right now, but it’s still in the oven. Let it bake for awhile longer, and then the victories will taste so much better than if you’d burned the cake on a higher temperature for a shorter period of time.