Biggest Disappointment This Season

[Jarvi]

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.

So you were saying he was in decline in the midst of his 100pt season?

 

[Jarvi]

Voted Knoblauch, but it's probably JJ's summer for most.

I was pretty upset at the whole offersheet situation, that it even got to that point. Arvidsson has been a dud, I think I was cautiously optimistic at the time? Can't remember. But hearing midway through the season that he has a NMC makes it so much worse.

The reason I voted Knob, is because I had zero concerns with him coming into the season. JJ's moves, while I liked some of them at the time, there is always potential for disaster. I didn't think there was any possibility I would be open to a coaching change this year. So for the fact that it caught me most off guard, Knob has been most disappointing.

 

[fireantz]

Thought preseason that Skinner-Draisaitl-Arvidsson was the answer to our second line

 

[Messrules11]

The biggest disappointment has to be not acquiring a true starting goalie. And it’s not even close.

 

[TopShelfGloveSide]

its mcdavid hell be lucky to put 100 pts up this year.

lol what…

 

[brentashton]

Thought preseason that Skinner-Draisaitl-Arvidsson was the answer to our second line

Admittedly I did too.

 

[McDNicks17]

I went with McDavid. Would have added RNH too if there we multiple votes.

I don't think the Arvidsson, Skinner and Henrique adds would look as bad if those two hadn't forgotten how to play hockey at 5v5.

 

[Oilhawks]

Voted Knoblauch, but it's probably JJ's summer for most.

I was pretty upset at the whole offersheet situation, that it even got to that point. Arvidsson has been a dud, I think I was cautiously optimistic at the time? Can't remember. But hearing midway through the season that he has a NMC makes it so much worse.

The reason I voted Knob, is because I had zero concerns with him coming into the season. JJ's moves, while I liked some of them at the time, there is always potential for disaster. I didn't think there was any possibility I would be open to a coaching change this year. So for the fact that it caught me most off guard, Knob has been most disappointing.

The whole roster is underperforming, in-game coaching decisions are puzzling (including ice time / randomized blender) and reek of a coach out of answers.

Going from a coach that seemed promising to a coach that seems out of answers ("fragile team") during a slump is incredibly disappointing

 

[Trafalgar Sadge Law]

It's the offseason. This team's obsession with aging veterans from the Chiarelli era to present sinks us year after year. Letting go of Holloway and Broberg to sign losers like Arvidsson/Skinner and retain the likes of Henrique/Kulak is straight up negligence. The goaltending situation is still somehow unresolved and the bottom 6 is still somehow unproductive. At least we made up for the Broberg loss by getting Walman but we could've used those assets to help land a top 6 scoring forward or a goalie instead.

 

[GhostfaceWu]

lol what…

So you expected Mcdavid to go from 150+ to 130+ points to barely 100?

 

[McBooya42]

It’s Saturday, and in celebration of HFBoards getting its shit “partly” back together, let’s choose this season’s biggest sad trombone.

The HF Boards site is missing as an option...

 

[McShogun99]

I thought the Campbell contract was good, so I got fooled on this too.

If the offer sheets never happened I wonder if we are in a different state of mind.

I was glad we got Campbell as well but I thought it was a million a year to much and a year to long when it was actually 4.25 million a year to much and 5 years to long. I also originally liked some of the moves JJ made with retaining players from the Cup run and letting McLeod and Foegele go( both were liabilities in tight games) and replacing them with Savoie, Skinner and Arvidsson.

 

[Drivesaitl]

It's the offseason. This team's obsession with aging veterans from the Chiarelli era to present sinks us year after year. Letting go of Holloway and Broberg to sign losers like Arvidsson/Skinner and retain the likes of Henrique/Kulak is straight up negligence. The goaltending situation is still somehow unresolved and the bottom 6 is still somehow unproductive. At least we made up for the Broberg loss by getting Walman but we could've used those assets to help land a top 6 scoring forward or a goalie instead.

Unfortunately if you were here on the board much in July and August you'll know some of the fans here ate this shit up and asked for seconds of old players while saying guys like McLeod, Holloway etc are "nothing".

Many of the fans here asked for this outright. They thought these were great offseason signings.

Kulak has been fine. Don't see the problem there.

 

[TB12]

McLeod was nothing. I will die on this hill that he brought nothing to a team with Cup aspirations. Watching him figure skate around during the playoffs and cough up pucks (which kicked off Vancouver's comeback attempt in game 7) and avoid hits was horrendous. No wonder he is doing better this year on a bad Buffalo team with no playoff aspirations. He will thrive in that lax environment.

 

[brentashton]

McLeod was nothing. I will die on this hill that he brought nothing to a team with Cup aspirations. Watching him figure skate around during the playoffs and cough up pucks (which kicked off Vancouver's comeback attempt in game 7) and avoid hits was horrendous. No wonder he is doing better this year on a bad Buffalo team with no playoff aspirations. He will thrive in that lax environment.

The McLeod flyby is something that should be shown to hockey players forever as something NOT to do. Fast skater into the o-zone, but even a faster skater when skating away from physical contact in pursuit of a loose puck or potential scoring opportunity. Absolute turd of a player.

 

[Mr Positive]

McLeod was nothing. I will die on this hill that he brought nothing to a team with Cup aspirations. Watching him figure skate around during the playoffs and cough up pucks (which kicked off Vancouver's comeback attempt in game 7) and avoid hits was horrendous. No wonder he is doing better this year on a bad Buffalo team with no playoff aspirations. He will thrive in that lax environment.

I agree to an extent. McLeod could still be more than Savoie though. McLeod is just a bottom six talent so it's not a huge deal. But, it would have been good to keep him if we were going to populate the bottom six with so many 30+ year old forwards.

The punch to the gut to our youth was the mishandling of Holloway and Broberg. This might have much deeper consequences than most think.

 

[rboomercat90]

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.

Jeff Jackson playing GM for a day should put to rest the idea that agents are capable of building a hockey team. Agents spend their entire career thinking of reasons and making excuses for why their player should be paid as much or more as the previous guy. Thats their sole purpose. It’s not in their best interest to consider all their hockey skills as a whole but rather to downplay or outright ignore their weaknesses and upsell their strengths. All these guys are equal to them one way or another.

 

[Messrules11]

McLeod was nothing. I will die on this hill that he brought nothing to a team with Cup aspirations. Watching him figure skate around during the playoffs and cough up pucks (which kicked off Vancouver's comeback attempt in game 7) and avoid hits was horrendous. No wonder he is doing better this year on a bad Buffalo team with no playoff aspirations. He will thrive in that lax environment.

McLeod, lmao, watching him turtle from any physical contact in the playoffs was an embarrassment. Good riddance to that little Mary.

 

[Mr Positive]

Jeff Jackson playing GM for a day should put to rest the idea that agents are capable of building a hockey team. Agents spend their entire career thinking of reasons and making excuses for why their player should be paid as much or more as the previous guy. Thats their sole purpose. It’s not in their best interest to consider all their hockey skills as a whole but rather to downplay or outright ignore their weaknesses and upsell their strengths. All these guys are equal to them one way or another.

But... what if we win the cup and Arivdsson was good?

 

[brentashton]

Jeff Jackson playing GM for a day should put to rest the idea that agents are capable of building a hockey team. Agents spend their entire career thinking of reasons and making excuses for why their player should be paid as much or more as the previous guy. Thats their sole purpose. It’s not in their best interest to consider all their hockey skills as a whole but rather to downplay or outright ignore their weaknesses and upsell their strengths. All these guys are equal to them one way or another.

Brian Lawton? Put together a pretty good Tampa Team.

George McPhee, Brian Burke, Kent Hughes. There are many others. I think we got a dud again because the owner doesn’t know what the f*** he’s doing in the talent assessment world.

 

[FlameChampion]

Pretty much all of the above.

80% of the roster has underperformed. Every move JJ made hasn’t worked. Skinner isn’t the answer. Knoblauch has no answers.

 

[Tarus]

This is kind of a tough one for me

- It might be the Jackson acquisitions, but everyone was as excited about getting those players as Jackson was to sign them. A lot of the underperformance we see out of those players are related to teamwide issues, including coaching and Mcdavid's tough season
- Bouchard has struggled, but he also doesn't have the missile that was Mcdavid in previous year to breakout the puck to this year.
- RNH is a living disappointment, can't neg him for being ineffective when he's always been ineffective.
- Hyman was always going to regress from his 50 goal season, it's just more pronounced with Mcdavid having an off year.
- Not really disappointed in Skinner, kind of expected him to struggle with inconsistent play, The issues with his game were long standing
- Knoblauch's coaching bump ended quickly. Now he's playing Mcdavid/Drai into the ground, and refuses to trust or utilize anyone who doesn't fit his mold of what a hockey player should be. Of course, if goaltending wasn't so bad, no one would be complaining.

- I guess Mcdavid's off year might be the biggest disappointment considering how important he is to the successes of team on the ice, many of the outstanding issues the team is currently facing are directly due to Mcdavid not being quite as dominant as in past years. He's carried this franchise for so long, but you can see that he's not shooting or driving to the net anymore, is constantly forcing bad passes instead of taking an extra step and creating a lane, and is frequently apathetic on defense. It's easy to see why people think he's injured or discontented in Edmonton, but I'll always give him the benefit of the doubt after how hard he's played for this franchise on the ice. Deep playoff runs, nagging injuries, and an offseason wedding that likely cut into his training time are probably all factors, and more off years are coming as he gets older and declines too.

 

[Cloned]

This is kind of a tough one for me

- It might be the Jackson acquisitions, but everyone was as excited about getting those players as Jackson was to sign them. A lot of the underperformance we see out of those players are related to teamwide issues, including coaching and Mcdavid's tough season
- Bouchard has struggled, but he also doesn't have the missile that was Mcdavid in previous year to breakout the puck to this year.
- RNH is a living disappointment, can't neg him for being ineffective when he's always been ineffective.
- Hyman was always going to regress from his 50 goal season, it's just more pronounced with Mcdavid having an off year.
- Not really disappointed in Skinner, kind of expected him to struggle with inconsistent play, The issues with his game were long standing
- Knoblauch's coaching bump ended quickly. Now he's playing Mcdavid/Drai into the ground, and refuses to trust or utilize anyone who doesn't fit his mold of what a hockey player should be. Of course, if goaltending wasn't so bad, no one would be complaining.

- I guess Mcdavid's off year might be the biggest disappointment considering how important he is to the successes of team on the ice, many of the outstanding issues the team is currently facing are directly due to Mcdavid not being quite as dominant as in past years. He's carried this franchise for so long, but you can see that he's not shooting or driving to the net anymore, is constantly forcing bad passes instead of taking an extra step and creating a lane, and is frequently apathetic on defense. It's easy to see why people think he's injured or discontented in Edmonton, but I'll always give him the benefit of the doubt after how hard he's played for this franchise on the ice. Deep playoff runs, nagging injuries, and an offseason wedding that likely cut into his training time are probably all factors, and more off years are coming as he gets older and declines too.

McDavid may have lost a step but I think the biggest overlooked factor is that as this team has transitioned to a puck possession style, his production has gone down.

His game is tailored for chaos, rush and counter attacking. He’s not as effective at “half court” hockey in the offensive zone.

Draisaitl, by contrast, has seen his game elevate as he excels at half court hockey.

Team can’t really afford to go back to rush hockey though because of how average the defensemen are and how bad the goaltending is. If they get an actual goaltender at some point (lol) and aren’t as deathly afraid to make plays instead of being vanilla and boring you’ll see his points go up again.

RNH getting laundromatted and becoming washed up along with Hyman dropping back down to his Leafs level haven’t helped either.

 

[Spawn]

We changed 25% of our roster from game 7 which is something a team trying to replicate should never do. That’s a change of 6 players that had chemistry with the team and gained valuable playoff experience. Ceci, Broberg, Desharnais, Holloway, McLeod and Foegele out. Then we replaced them with aging, slower or less experienced players like Emberson, Podz, Skinner and Arvidsson.

The Panthers barely changed their lineup after their Cup loss and barely changed it after their Cup win. That’s how teams stay competitive. All the Oilers had to do was a few tweaks and maybe a 10-15% roster turnover.

Panthers swapped out just as many players as the Oilers did this summer after they lost in 2022-2023. There's nothing wrong with making changes. This team unfortunately just made bad decisions choices on most of them.

 

[Spawn]

NHL PPG leaders if you exclude empty net points:

MacKinnon from 1.52 to 1.33
Draisaitl from 1.52 to 1.45
Kucherov from 1.50 to 1.35
McDavid from 1.42 to 1.4

McDavid's downfall is overexaggerated somewhat because of a relatively poor stretch of hockey in the last ~15 games. Arguably the first genuinely bad stretch of hockey in his entire career. And the teams general inability to score on empty nets this season. (Colorado has scored 25 EN goals, Tampa has scored 25 and the Oilers have scored.... 8 lol).

Even with McDavid's somewhat down year and awful depth scoring, by far the biggest issue on this team is goaltending and the management teams inability/unwillingness to address it. When we get average goaltending or better we're virtually unbeatable. Unfortunately we get average or better goaltending far too infrequently.