3 Things That Need To Happen If The Edmonton Oilers Miss The Playoffs
Fire And Replace Edmonton Oilers General Manager
This isn’t a personal shot at Ken Holland, as he appears to be a nice enough person, but some of the decisions he has made as GM have put this team in a hard spot cap-wise and it will be tough to get out of it.
The Nurse Signing
The biggest one of these signings is the Darnell Nurse contract. I know this could also be blamed on Peter Chiarelli cause if he would have signed him long-term as he did Leon and Conner then this wouldn’t have been something Holland would have had to do.
I know when Nurse signed that the $9.25 million contract was the going rate or that calibre of player that season. That doesn’t mean that Nurse is worth that much and we can see that this season. Last season at his $5.6 million cap hit Nurse was playing above his salary, which is what you want.
That is the problem this season at $9.25 million it is tough to play to that level to make it so it is worth it. This is why at the time it was signed we all knew it was going to be bad. In the next couple of years, as the cap goes up, it may not seem as bad, but right now it does.
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Too Many Shots In The Dark Missed
Over the past few seasons, Holland has taken a lot of dice rolls on players that just haven’t panned out the way he thought they would. For Nygard his first season with Ryan Murray this season. There haven’t been many good depth signings by Holland since he became GM.
The best depth signings I can think of are Derek Ryan and Devin Shore. The fact that those two are the two best is the reason why I think we need a GM that is better and finding players that can fit a role.
It appears all that Holland wants is players that can kill penalties. Then when it comes to killing penalties they aren’t even being used. It seems like there is a disconnect between Holland and the coaching staff on how they want to utilize players.
The Edmonton Oilers need to be a team that can succeed in whatever scenario they are put in. If they play a fast team they need to be able to play quickly, if they play a big strong team they need to be able to play that way as well. Right now they just can’t seem to play in any particular way.