It’s Saturday, and in celebration of HFBoards getting its shit “partly” back together, let’s choose this season’s biggest sad trombone.
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In the meantime, feel free to join our Discord ServerShatty, that option would have been too easy.Literally all of the above.
I'm in the mood for easy today! I'm pretty upset that the Oilers have pissed away the season. I really though this would be our year.Shatty, that option would have been too easy.![]()
I agree with this 100 percent, but what is the answer?? We haven't found lines that work at all. With Kane and Fredric coming back it will only get worse. I feel like we should at least try to get 2 lines set in stone.Jeff Jacksons summer pretty easily. To be somewhat fair to him, almost all the feedback I saw at the time was how good of acquisitions Skinner and Arvidsson were and how the Oilers uad the best top-9 in the NHL.
Has been an utter disaster to take a step backwards in the most crucial year of this generation's team.
Evan Bouchard is #2. Going from a star defenseman that fans around the league were prematurely putting into the Norris conversation pre-season, he barely looks like a top-pairing dman at times. I've read that the analytics still say he's elite, but it's hard to say he hasn't taken a giant step back from last year, which is a bit of a concern as he enters his prime.
RNH's decline has been expected and shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that didn't have their goldenboy-coloured glasses. I've been pointing out this decline for the past couple years and this fanbase has defended him relentlessly.
McDavid is certainly generational. I'm assuming you mean he's not playing at that level specifically this season? This one is an anomaly to me. He doesn't seem injured.
I don't think anyone expected Hyman to be a consistent 50 goal scorer. He's on lace for his 3rd-highest goal total of his career. I don't consider him a disappointment.
Jeff Skinner I suppose was more of a wildcard than has all thought. Part of me think that things could have gone differently of he was given more of a chance from the start. We were a good chunk into the season when he was a top-2 winger in terms of production relative to icetime, and by that point he was already demoted to the 4th line.
Stu I would put #3 on this list. He just had to be average. That was it.
Something I don't like about Knoblauch is his constant line shuffling. We're 60 games into Season 2 and we're still seeing multiple line combinations within each game. At no point has he given any of the forwards a chance to develop chemistry.
This franchise's window trajectory was blown up with the Summer of Jeff. They were left with an older, smaller, slower and weaker team especially desolate once the inexperienced former super agent overspent and lost this team's only young emergent NHL talent. The roster additions have all failed. The youth they have lost have all blossomed with opportunity and trust in other organizations. They've had to continue burning through future pedigree assets to fix holes in all position areas created by the epic misses with all of the summer decisions.
For a guy who boasted a vision to create a model organization built up information and analytic supported decision making, prioritizing draft and development, and other best of class functions, this team has lost its identity as Oiler team that pushes teams back and into chaos through its speed, tenacious forecheck and puck pressure into a slow, nondescript team that struggles to score; wilts into poor decision making and lost structure in its own zone defending; and can't get stops. Only saving grace will have to be the Oilers organization spending its way out of a prospective retool with the huge cap jumps likely to create tiers within league teams who can live at the cap ceiling revenue wise or fall into market derived life budgets below these big league cap jumps.
The decade of darkness is a case study in what not to do with a scorched earth rebuild. The Summer of Jeff will be a strong lesson on how precarious change can be to a contending team when it prioritizes old veteran players over young developing home grown drafted and developed who demonstrated their growth potential through a long Cup run. The Broberg Holloway offer sheets is the penultimate of a summer of poor decision making with precedent setting bungle by a guy who was hired largely on his work as a super agent fluent in the CBA, relationship management, and maximizing client value through manipulating value points within the system.
Epic failure.
The offseason seemed good at the time, but in retrospect... man, what a total disaster.The offseason has not looked good
His Skinner and Li'l Arvy signings looked good at the time (other than the 2 year term and NM), but ONLY on the assumption that Holloway and Broberg were going to be signed. As it turns out, he never left enough money in the kitty to do that, and it a started a spiral effect of events. Like having to bring in Kapanen, and also Dermott and getting Emberson to try and fill vacancies.Jeff Jacksons summer pretty easily. To be somewhat fair to him, almost all the feedback I saw at the time was how good of acquisitions Skinner and Arvidsson were and how the Oilers uad the best top-9 in the NHL.
Has been an utter disaster to take a step backwards in the most crucial year of this generation's team.
Evan Bouchard is #2. Going from a star defenseman that fans around the league were prematurely putting into the Norris conversation pre-season, he barely looks like a top-pairing dman at times. I've read that the analytics still say he's elite, but it's hard to say he hasn't taken a giant step back from last year, which is a bit of a concern as he enters his prime.
RNH's decline has been expected and shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that didn't have their goldenboy-coloured glasses. I've been pointing out this decline for the past couple years and this fanbase has defended him relentlessly.
McDavid is certainly generational. I'm assuming you mean he's not playing at that level specifically this season? This one is an anomaly to me. He doesn't seem injured.
I don't think anyone expected Hyman to be a consistent 50 goal scorer. He's on lace for his 3rd-highest goal total of his career. I don't consider him a disappointment.
Jeff Skinner I suppose was more of a wildcard than has all thought. Part of me think that things could have gone differently of he was given more of a chance from the start. We were a good chunk into the season when he was a top-2 winger in terms of production relative to icetime, and by that point he was already demoted to the 4th line.
Stu I would put #3 on this list. He just had to be average. That was it.
Something I don't like about Knoblauch is his constant line shuffling. We're 60 games into Season 2 and we're still seeing multiple line combinations within each game. At no point has he given any of the forwards a chance to develop chemistry.
I thought the Campbell contract was good, so I got fooled on this too.Interesting poll. Its odd how many posters here were all in on that Jackson wild ride and all saying Holloway, McLeod, Foegele, Broberg were nothing and that the new "guns" were going to take our scoring to another level. Yet here we are.
Everybody gets how bad the offseason was now. Its pathetic for an org to lose so many players in an offseason while replacing them with old players with no futures. We mortgaged future AND got worse and older.