Comparing Ken Holland with Peter Chiarelli

[Behind Enemy Lines]

Chia fell into the same trap as MacT.

Some good early trades, MPS for Perron, Scrivens for Kassian, Maroon for a song and a dance... But fixing the issues of your predecessor is easy, it's a lot harder when your solutions fail. But good news for those two: that was just impossible. *Fingers in ears* LALALALALALALALA

Nikitin and Ference are top 4 defencemen, on-ice results be damned; Jultz will always be the golden boy, while Petry needs to prove himself; Eakins is a top-tier coach and definitely not a snake oils salesman; Lucic is a top 6er, 30 games without a goal be damned; Pulju at 18/19 is ready to replace Ebs, he just he's a broken down Jokinen to unlock his endless potential...


Say what you will about Holland, but he doesn't keep trying to beat that dead horse to get it to work.
AA was cast off asap when he didn't click McDavid or Drai. Same with Campbell, who probably got too little rope, but that's the price when you make 5mil in a tight cap world.

Plus his bold moves actually worked out more often than not. Hyman, Ekholm being the two biggest gems.

***

The only one I'll defend Chia on: Imo Reinhart wasn't his mistake. He had only been with the organisation for 2 months and had no experience with Reinhart. That one was entirely pushed for by Green.

But what should have happened was Chia saying sure he's a great prospect, but the team already has Klefbom and Marincin showing decently at the NHL level, Davidson and Oesterle playing well in OKC, and Nurse drafted 2 years previous. Why the hell was another young LHD a need?
Not pushing back after the team depth chart is where Chia f***ed up.

Chiarelli is absolutely to blame for the Reinhart trade. He referenced several times watching him live at Memorial Cup and early pro games. New guy who coming in with negotiated title beyond GM and ultimate organization decision making power, this was Chiarelli's first power move.

Fact that the Oilers and Green specifically had years of information on Reinhart unfortunately sealed the incredibly bad decision. This 'bold' Chiarelli decision making is consistent with his big blunders with Saguin and Hall. Reinhart was foreshadowing of the buffoonery to come that culminated with his awful try to save his job desperation work that further hollowed out a thin NHL roster.

“He has to make our team,” Chiarelli said. “We’ve got eight or nine D who are challenging. I believe he is. I know his year last year wasn’t great and there’s reasons behind that and that really is, not excuses, but there are reasons that explain it. But what I saw in the Memorial Cup is that you’ve got a player here who can dominate, that can lug the puck, and that can make plays and for a bigger sized man, he can move well.”

About Holland he tried to re-sign AA after rolling out two quality picks for him, but, (thankfully) covid cap saved him from overpaying a largely mediocre player.

Chiarelli set his course right from the McDavid draft trying to speed up the rebuild with a big pro level prospect d he was confident in from his own direct scouting and evaluation. Spoiled the quality second first rounder MacTavish left him and high second round pick that would have given this organization a couple of quality adds to a lean prospect pool. Master of his own demise.

 

[Oilhawks]

Sounds like damage control to me. “Of course we wanted Koskinen at 4 mill”

From the brilliant mind of "If Toby Rieder scored a goal, we would have made the playoffs"

 

[TheNumber4]

List of Holland's trades as an Oiler:

Lucic+3rd round pick for Neal - small win as getting rid of Lucic was essential, but still paying for Neal buyout today.

John Marino for 6th round pick - meh

Kyle Brodziak + 4th for Mike Green - meh

Two x2nd round picks (plus fan favourite Sam Gagner) for Athanasiou - absolutely horrendous

5th round pick for Tyler Ennis - meh

4th round pick for Kulikov - meh

Caleb Jones + 3rd round pick for Duncan Keith - Absolutely horrendous. Should have received a 1st round pick to take Keith from Chicago.

Ethan Bear for Warren Foegele - win. Foegele was a decent contributor here for 3 years and Bear has bounced around.

Lagesson+2nd for Kulak - win. If Kulak had just been a rental I don't think it would have been worth it. But he's been a good player for us since.

4th round pick for Derek Brassard - bad trade

Kassian + 1st + 2nd + 3rd for 1st - horrendous (to be fair more so an issue of the awful contract he gave to Kassian).

Samorukov for Kostin - win

Puljujarvi for some rando - meh

Barrie+Schaeffer for Ekholm - A++ massive win

Bjugstad for 4th - meh

Yamamoto+Kostin for futures - meh. Didn't have the cap space to re-sign Kostin and at least didn't give up anything to dump Yamamoto

4th rounder for Troy Stetcher - meh. Team never wanted to play him and then he got hurt.

1st+4th for Henrique and Carrick - win because Henrique re-signed but a 1st was a lot to give up for a guy that was relegated to 3rd line duty.

Overall I think that is a pretty mediocre list of trades. One really great trade in 5 years when the team was trying to win a cup isn't nearly good enough imo. A handful of other decent trades. A bunch of meh deadline acquisitions that never really helped us get anywhere. And a couple really terrible ones.

(I left out ones that just involved AHL guys or just picks)

The thing that stands out to me is that of all those trades and additions, only Ekholm and Foegele were positive value guys who had team control beyond the season we acquired them. Everyone else was UFA or an RFA we couldn't qualify. We re-signed Kulak and Henrique and obviously their time here played a big part in that. But both of them made it into free agency before we signed them.

Overall I don't think Holland was ever proactive enough in improving the roster. He never gave the impression he was turning over every stone and looking in every corner to make deals that could make the team better and he all but refused to make "NHL trades" (players for players).

I don't think I can bring myself to look through the Chiarelli trades though lol. The Talbot and Maroon ones he made were really good. After that is a calamity of cluster f***ery.

Honestly that amount of mehs, small wins, and one big win is more than most GMs that tried their hand at the job in Edmonton had.

The amount of activity is actually impressive in itself. Compared to some GMs we’ve had and around the League.

I do fault Holland for bringing over his crappy scouts though. No doubt some of those pick ups were Archie’s picks.

I agree with your rating for most, except some. On the Kieth trade, Hawks took a sizeable 2 year cap penalty as a consequence of that trade. Risk likely known at the time of dealing. That’s not worth paying a 1st to get rid of him, they also weren’t getting rid of him, they were doing Keith a favor. Keith was fine as an Oiler.

On Pool, I don’t know how much he could have got for a bust with broken hips in Pool either as we found out when Carolina then gave him away for free.

 

[5 Mins 4 Ftg]

One is pretty bald and the other has hair.

 

[Stoneman89]

Not sure which one of them offered up the Kassian signing, but that was brutal. Yet another, where a guy played with McDavid a bit, had a great game or 2 in the playoffs and got outlandishly rewarded far past his normal paygrade.

And regarding Koskinen, there were some on here who vigorously defended that contract. And amazingly, even when it was in it's 3rd or 4th year. But it was an unmitigated disaster and Chia's final "f*** you" to the organization. And whoever oversaw that should have taken the fall as well.

 

[Stoneman89]

Devils advocate counter punch being the Leon and McDavid deals lol.

both did absolutely out play their contracts. But at the same time anyone could have seen that coming.

I do remember when Drai got that contract, there was some concern, and it got much louder after the 1st year or so. But yes, it did quiet down after that, and became a value contract. McDavid's of course, was never in question.