When you think about Edmonton Oilers prospects, some of the more intriguing ones who come to mind are Matt Savoie, Beau Akey, Sam O'Reilly and Max Wanner. However, when it comes to the NHL as a whole, it would seem the organisation isn't perceived with very much positivity.
Consider The Athletic's latest offering (subscription required), an excellent analysis by Corey Pronman, which ranks the top NHL players and prospects under 23. To say the Oilers didn't fair particularly well, would be an understatement.
Before we get into that though, to provide some general context, Pronman ranked 139 players altogether and placed them all into into one of six tiers to explain their potential upside. Tier one is elite, tier two is NHL All-Star, tier three is bubble NHL All-Star/top of the lineup, tier four is top of the lineup, tier five is bubble top/middle of the lineup, and tier six is middle of the lineup.
The Oilers have HOW many on the list?!?!
With this in mind, let's get to the bad news concerning the Oilers, in that they only have one player on The Athletic's list and he is in tier six. More specifically we're referencing Savoie, who wasn't even drafted by the Oilers, instead being selected ninth overall by the Buffalo Sabres back in 2022.
Now on the plus side --as much as you can call it a plus -- at least the Oilers have a player on the list, with the only teams not included being the Florida Panthers and Boston Bruins. In a further indictment however, consider that the Oilers were the last of the 30 NHL teams to be mentioned, with Savoie being ranked at number 129 out of the 139 young players.
Now this isn't the first time the Oilers have made out badly in this type of arena. You may well remember back in August of last year, when we wrote about how they only had one player in The Hockey Writers' top 100 NHL prospects, which was also Savoie.
Now to be fair, the Oilers do have some ability to identify young talent, with recent examples including the likes of Philip Broberg, Dylan Holloway and Xavier Bourgault. However, as fans in Edmonton are painfully aware, none of that trio are with the team anymore.
As things stand, the Oilers have one of the poorest farm systems out of all 32 NHL teams. Not that this is a concern for the team as such right now, with them firmly focused on attempting to win it all while they have such a golden opportunity.
At some point though, the organisation is going to have to focus more on improving their prospect pool, because generational talents like Connor McDavid and to a lesser extent Leon Draisaitl aren't going to be around forever. Actually, once those two retire, if nothing else at least the Oilers will probably start getting higher picks again in each round of the draft.