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.