Round five - no pick, traded to Montreal for prospect Hayden Hawkey.
Round six - Tomas Mazura, 162nd overall
We can see now that this draft was not very deep as the Oilers were really reaching with this one. Mazura was picked after he put up three points in four US junior games in the USHL, then chose to go the US college route, first with Providence College for a year and then St. Lawrence University for the last two.
During that time Mazura's boxcars from two points (eight games) to 12 points (28 games), to 20 points (34 games). However, what really tipped the scales on this pick for me is that as Mazura's games played has increased his +/- has gone down from +4 in the USHL to 0 at Providence to +2 at St. Lawrence and then sliding to -5 last season.
Mazura's one saving grace is that he is still on the Oilers reserve list, which means if next season - likely his last in US College - he breaks out the Oilers can sign him to an ELC and bring him to Bakersfield or to Fort Wayne in the ECHL (or they can also trade his signing rights if another team wants to trade for him). So this might be the one rare miss of a pick that has a chance at turning into a hit. So, while Mazura's NHL dreams aren't over it's fair to say they're on life support. Unfortunately, Puckpedia doesn't carry expiration dates on the players on the reserve list like CapFriendly used to do (man oh man I miss that site) so I have no idea when he'll be booted off the reserve list.
Hit or miss? Miss, with shades of gray.
Round seven - Maxim Denezhkin, 193rd overall
Denezhkin's story isn't all that interesting - this was clearly a throw at the dartboard that missed. Denezhkin piled up points in the Russian KHL junior leagues before putting up less points in the KHL minor leagues and barely any in the KHL.
Denezhkin since has bounced around the KHL minors and the KHL and the results show him to be nothing more than a VHL-KHL bubble player. He hasn't gotten anywhere near North America and at this point, I doubt he will.
Like Mazura, he remains on the Oilers reserve list but don't count on him getting signed anytime soon.
Hit or Miss? Miss
Who did the Oilers miss out on? The Oilers really only missed out on a single impact player in any of these rounds, Dustin Wolf (Calgary, seventh round), who will likely be suiting up for the Flames this season since Jakob Markstrom's trade to New Jersey has been completed. I don't know, the Oilers probably could've used him but I have no lamentations for the tandem of Skinner-Pickard that we have now, with Olivier Rodrigue in the pipeline. In the fifth round, only bottom six forward Mark Kastelic (Ottawa, since traded to Boston) was drafted as the closest thing to an impact player, and he was one of two players to play NHL games in that round and was drafted prior to the Oilers position (or what would've been that position had they not traded away their pick) so they wouldn't have had a chance at him regardless. Not a single player in round six is of any consequence so the Oilers aren't alone in missing on that one.