Oilers have just 1 player in The Hockey Writers' top 100 NHL prospects

On Tuesday, we wrote about how poorly the Edmonton Oilers' prospect pool is viewed by the media, when compared to the other 31 NHL teams. For example, The Athletic recently ranked them 30th (subscription required), the Daily Faceoff had them at 29 and back in April, ESPN placed them 28th.

Now we did make the case that we wouldn't have been quite as harsh in ranking the Oiles' prospect pool. Regardless, this has been an issue for the organisation for around a decade now, with repeated criticism about their inability to properly develop their young players.

(The most recent example of this is the just-departed Philip Broberg, who only finally got the opportunity to show what he was truly capable of, during the playoffs. There was speculation that his relationship with the Oilers was beyond repair, which likely factored into the decision not to match the offer sheet tendered by the St. Louis Blues.)

With all this in mind, we were intrigued by The Hockey Writers revealing their preseason rankings for the NHL's top 100 prospects. Written by Logan Horn, it went about as well as you're probably anticipating.

Drum roll ...

In all, the Oilers only had one prospect in the top 100, and that was Matthew Savoie at number 40. Making this seem even worse, is the fact he wasn't even drafted by them, only coming to Edmonton via a recent trade with the Buffalo Sabres.

For some more context, The Hockey Writers also included eight honourable mentions, but no Oilers were on this list either. It was the same outcome for their separate rankings of the top 10 goalie prospects, albeit that was released earlier this year.

Just to be clear, we should note it's not as if the Oilers were the only team to have just one representative in Horn's top 100. This was also the case for the New Jersey Devils, Ottawa Senators, Pittsburgh Penguins, Vegas Golden Knights, Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Boston Bruins, New York Islanders and Colorado Avalanche. (Although the Islanders and Avalanche did both have an additional honourable mention.)

Is it really all THAT bad?

Regardless, none of this helps with the continuing narrative about the Oilers being incapable of building even a decent prospect pool. To reiterate though, we don't think it's all doom and gloom, with the likes of Raphael Lavoie, Beau Akey and the recently drafted Sam O'Reilly. (We'd also throw in recent additions, Ty Emberson and Vasily Podkolzin.)

Overall, we entirely appreciate that the Oilers' main focus right now is going 'all-in' to try and finally win a first Stanley Cup since 1989-90, while they still have both Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. However, it is imperative that Stan Bowman and the rest of the front office work on building a stronger prospect pool moving forward.

N.B. The Montreal Canadiens had the most prospects in The Hockey Writers' top 100, with eight. This was followed by the San Jose Sharks with seven, then the Seattle Kraken and Detroit Red Wings, with six apiece.

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