I'm not really a pro-Bennett supporter. I speculated earlier that if he was the true BPA we needed to take him, other considerations be damned, but the more I learned about Draisaitl, the more I came around to the notion that maybe it was a case of "all (or most) things being equal." I would have been happy with either, and by the week of the draft I was kind of pulling for Draisaitl (but hoping Bennett would go to the Sabres and not south of us).
That said, yeah, of course I think the team could have succeeded with RNH and Bennett. In fact, I suspect that trying to beat the Kings & the Ducks at their own game is going to be harder than trying to get ahead of the curve and crafting a team that plays to its own strengths and anticipates the league's future as all the imitators start chasing big players and the talent pool there gets diluted. We'll see. I really like what Draisaitl brings to the table, and agree that it's probably the better fit.
With Bennett, I think the Oilers would still have to address some size concerns (they still do, in fact), likely on the wing and the third-line, as they would need to get stronger. But I think that Taylor Hall and Nail Yakupov as they move into their mid-20s are going to be plenty strong and play at 200+lbs and throw some muscle around, that RNH and Bennett (or Reinhart) in their prime won't exactly be "small", that we're building a blueline that looks like it's going to be WAY big (if not necessarily snarly), and that teams like Vancouver in the West have done pretty well over the past few years against heavy teams (and that we were shaping up to be more skilled and grittier than them), and some Eastern teams with smaller centers like Detroit and Philly don't seem to be freaking out (oh no we can't win with Claude Giroux or Pavel Datsyuk!).
I think the size queens have trapped themselves into a paradigm and are fixating on on issue that's not as big of a deal as it's been made out to be, not as insurmountable an issue, and not really the main problem, but they've boxed themselves into this mentality and only see one way out. Just 100% locked into this way of thinking, this scapegoating of the team's issues. I think it was IATL who said to me, when I was questioning this "size trumps all" draft mentality earlier, "aren't you tired of seeing the Oilers being pushed around by the big centers?" And sure, I was. But I was also tired of seeing the Oilers make stupid neutral zone turnovers, miss assignments in their own zone, come out stumbling in the first 15 minutes of the game, lollygag around their own blueline looking for the breakout pass, give up on board battles, completely ignore abuse of their key players, and essentially skate around the ice like they don't give a turd. Big shoulders and a fat ass won't solve those problems, as much as it would be nice. Bennett, by reports, would have solved a lot of those problems though. He would have fit in with this team. I predict he would have made a really nice pairing with Taylor Hall, and that other teams would have had to send the outfield back when they were on the ice. That the Oilers could build a speed-kills team that comes out strong in the 1st period and owns the ice in the 3rd while the fat-***** are sucking wind.
But I like Draisaitl too, and what he brings to the table. With all the optimism in my heart, I hope that the RNH/Leon combination might evoke shades of Sakic/Forsberg. I'm all in for that, fingers crossed.
But I think it's really narrow-sighted to think this is the only way this team could turn their fortunes around. A good way, a hopeful way, but not the sole way.
