A Toxic Trait The Edmonton Oilers Have Developed

In a post by Mike Gould on twitter he noticed that since 2016 the Edmonton Oilers only have 2 of their first round picks under their control still. While most of us are aware these players or picks were moved to bring in other players. The problem with keeping none of your first round picks is eventually the Edmonton Oilers will have no players from the farm to push the players on the NHL team.

Evan Bouchard

For being the only player from this list to have a chance to play in the NHL it is a good one for the Oilers to have. Bouchard runs the powerplay for this team, a team who has one of the best powerplays in NHL history. While Bouchard still does have a bit of work to do in his own end his offensive upside far outweighs the mistakes he makes. He has seemed to find a niche playing with Ekholm. Ekholm provides a calm that I think Bouchard really plays off of.

Sam O’Reilly

Only being drafted a couple of months ago, Sam O'Reilly may not even be on this list at this time next year. When the Oilers are looking to improve their team this year at the deadline, O’Reilly is going to be one of their biggest bargaining chips. While I would like to say that the Oilers are going to keep him to see what he becomes, the odds are not in that favour right now as the main goal of this team right now is to win the Stanley Cup.

The Oilers currently do not have a first round pick at next years draft either as they traded it for the pick they used on Sam O’Reilly. So it is going to be at least a couple of years before they get another chance to pick in the first round. While the Oilers winning the Stanley Cup is the ultimate goal, the Oilers also do not want to completely throw away their future.