Do You Think The Oilers Have Done Enough To Help McDrai Win The Cup?

  • Work is still on-going to rebuild the site styling and features. Please report any issues you may experience so we can look into it.
Here is what I want to happen today. And it will change tomorrow.lol

We Vegas kane.

We use the 5 mill to get a 2rd at TDL

We bring in Kane as a bottom 6 forward for the playoffs. He will be rusty but he can crash and bang on that bottom 6 and has a game suited to that. And who knows, maybe he gets hot and moves up the line.

We get a goalie at TDL to upgrade Pickard.

Fine if both the 2rd and 2b goalie are Ufa and just rentals.
Gibson at the deadline makes the oilers the cup favorites lmo, nevermind adding another forward for Kane’s cap hit.
 
Last edited:
A lot of hockey is decided by the 5 best vs the 5 best.

I’m a stl fan so I’m not super concerned about playoff matchups, but if I were I’d want to avoid Edmonton and Colorado above all else. Not that they can’t be beat but it’s a very tall ask to have your 5 best against either of those two team’s groups. Really hard to win 1 goal games against either of those groups as the last 2 minutes of the game will involve freakishly good hockey players. All they have to do is steal one or two games with fantastic play in critical moments.
 
Every team this year has flaws and question marks.

Edmonton is in a glut with Vegas, Toronto, Florida, and Minny.

Could also say Colorado, Peg, Devils if they fix some shit as sub-contenders, but the parity is real. There's no super-team.
I agree, but the reign of McDrai so far has had the following goalies/dmen:
Smith
Talbot
Skinner
Koskinen
Campbell
Benning
Larsson
Nurse
Barrie
Bouchard
Ceci
Kulak
Ekholm

Extremely mediocre as a whole for a decade. I get if the D or goaltending was good you can make the case for tinkering with the other one, but both of them for 10 years have been extremely mediocre, especially when you compare it with teams that won the cup or won multiple cups.
 
In a word, no. But that has more to do with the various organizational failures that have plagued the team for decades. Scouting at all levels is atrocious and they keep hiring also rans in the front office and behind the bench (until they finally stopped on that front).

It is my personal belief that the Oilers have always seen McDavid as an instant win button. Even Crosby only won the one Cup early in his career and it took 7 years before he even got close again. It takes a lot of things going right for a team to win a Cup, and McDrai cover up the abysmal drafting and mostly porous acquisitions via trade or free agency.

For instance, Stuart Skinner is a popular target for fans and yeah, he's definitely not the greatest goalie on the planet. But considering he was thrust into starter duty when Jack Campbell completely cratered as an Oiler, I think he's done fine. That has more to do with a team that has struggled with drafting goalies for generations than Skinner himself.

Even halfway competent management and this team probably already has a Cup. And they certainly would've dealt with both Holloway and Broberg before the offer sheets happened. But alas, here we are. The West looks like a gauntlet again....
 
  • Like
Reactions: Czechboy
Let's just look at some of the guys they have missed, lost for nothing or next to, and FA f***ups since they have gotten Mcdavid

Barzal/Debrincat etc from the griffin reinhart trade. Considered horrible the day it happened and just worse since then.

Misread the situation with Larsson and lose him in FA after giving a Hart trophy winner up for him.

Kesselring sure would be nice right now beside Nurse. We gave him and a 3rd for a couple months of Bjugstad.

Holloway/Broberg in exchange for Jeff Skinner/Arvidsson. Funny thing about Broberg is that he was also a bad pick at the time. They needed depth scoring, passed on Zegras to take a LHD when I believe we still had Klefbom at the time and obviously had Nurse. Then "developed" him for years, never give him opportunity and then walked him right into an offer sheet just to lose him when he finally showed some signs of life.

Traded the pick that was Wallstedt when he dropped to them. Actively avoided one of the best goalies in the draft when it's been a need forever.

Gave away John Marino for nothing.

The Puljujarvi pick is bad in hindsight, at the time us fans thought it was a steal. Management should have known though, as apparently 2 other GM's knew he wasn't worth it. Imagine Tkachuk on this squad?

Nurse contract. They sign him a year early off a career year that was a shortened season with only playing a select few teams. Just a brutal decision when we had no leverage, just f***ing wait.

Then you got Jack Campbell. I hated the signing from Day 1, as I want a crazy goalie not a giant p***y. Just a brutal gamble.

Honestly, I think this team is probably better if we never canned MacT once we won the Davo Lotto. He wasn't perfect, but the GM's we have had since then have been some of the worst. Give us the management from any of the last 10 cup winners and we probably have a couple cups by now.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Czechboy
The team is actually much better defensively that they are given credit for. Very good at chance suppression. Where they have struggled is in net (duh) and secondary scoring. In general the team just doesn’t have anyone produce when it matters outside or McDrai. Returns so far on the offseason moves do not look good.

Will be interesting to see what they do at the deadline and how the Kane situation shakes out.

But even as currently constructed they are obviously a contender.
 
The team is actually much better defensively that they are given credit for. Very good at chance suppression. Where they have struggled is in net (duh) and secondary scoring. In general the team just doesn’t have anyone produce when it matters outside or McDrai. Returns so far on the offseason moves do not look good.

Will be interesting to see what they do at the deadline and how the Kane situation shakes out.

But even as currently constructed they are obviously a contender.
They had their usual October lull to start the season and have picked it up in November. Since Nov. 9th, they have the best record in the NHL this season, which is pretty much the same damn thing as the season prior (from Nov. 12th onwards they had the best record in the NHL that season).


Knoblaugh/Coffey don't allow run n' gun, no defense hockey, the Oilers have been good defensively for a year+ now. This year they are 7th best in the league for goals against/game, last year under Knoblaugh they were 6th best, so settling in there too.

 
  • Like
Reactions: Video Nasty
Oilers kept facing set backs from poor management. Piss poor trades and drafting set the team back a few years but they have been heading the right direction in the playoffs the last few seasons.
 
Draisaitl and McDavid have wasted prime years of their career for nothing cause the Oilers built lousy teams. Can you imagine having two franchise generational players like that and having nothing to show for? Oilers would have been better off years ago to trade one of them or both to have great elements to build actual teams.

I knew back then it was a waste by the NHL to let McDavid being drafted by the Oilers after they kept finishing last. Bettman and none of the governors acted on it, no new ruling, nothing. And there you have it. Almost 30 years old and nothing to show for.
 
No Edmonton has not done enough, not even close. McDavid just turned 28 and has a statline of 352+689=1041 points and +160, which is good enough for 82nd all time in points. Crosby when he was 28 was sitting at 302+551=853 points and +129 which was good enough for 125th in all time points. If Crosby was 28 right now that would only be good for 153rd in all time points. So not only is McDavid better offensively, which everybody knows but he's also slightly better defensively since he has a better +/- while playing with way inferior players compared to Crosby up until they both turned 28. Most here have no idea how incredibly good McDavid has been so far in his career.

Unfortunately it's starting to look like McDavid is slowing down a bit and the best parts are probably behind him at this point. Lets see how he holds up and if Edmonton can get some talent around him in the upcomming years. If Edmonton was smart they would keep their eyes on Laine next year when his deal expire. Laine would be magic for Edmonton's powerplay. And make a move for some underrated defenseman like Jake Walman or Neal Pionk to improve the defense.
 
Peter Chiarelli unfortunately started to blow it about 30-45 minutes after drafting McDavid. Hiring Chiarelli and Nicholson that summer ended up being the worst decision they could have made.

A once in a life time global event causing a multi-year-long cap squeeze during the prime of McDavid and Draisaitl's careers certainly hasn't helped.
 
  • Like
Reactions: FiveFourteenSixOne
An actual intelligent perspective on this, yesterday, by the fine Bruce McCurdy (Oilers' expert since the early 1970s):

Connor McDavid turns 28 today, and his Edmonton Oilers are aging right along with him

My take would be that Peter Chiarelli did a lot of harm. He made about two good moves and ten or eleven terrible ones (Griffin Reinhart... trading Ryan Strome for 25 games of Ryan Spooner... getting only 1 stay-at-home Dman for future Hart-winner Taylor Hall... out-of-nowhere 4-year overpayment for Mikko Koskinen... etc.).

Because of Chiarelli's incompetence, the very promising 2016-17 season (the Oilers' best in almost 30 years) went for naught, as the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons were total wastes and could be added to the "decade of darkness" to make what I refer to as the "thirteen years of thirst".

But starting in the Holland-era, from 2019-20, the Oilers have been competitive every season and made the playoffs five years in a row, almost surely to be six this year. They won the division in 2022 and won the Conference (quite an achievement nowadays) in 2024. One win away from the Cup.

Holland made his share of bad moves, too, but not overly many and at least you could see what he was prioritizing --- basically dependable veterans, and trying to build up the depth in case of a Cup run.

Nobody really saw the Bowman-hiring coming, but here we are. The interim period with Jeff Jackson seemed to leave the Oilers' vulnerable for a few weeks, as St. Louis swept in with an offer-sheet to take two promising younger players away. Kind of a crappy job there.

So, has the organization done enough? If the Olers win the Cup, then yes. If they don't, then... I dunno. It's on the fence, maybe depending on how they make out this season and next season.

(We pause here to note that drafting superstar players in the Cap-era doesn't mean you're logically a favorite to win a championship. More so, it means that you now have to pay a lot for those superstars and then have less remaining to pay the rest of the depth guys needed to win.)
 
  • Like
Reactions: FiveFourteenSixOne
Peter Chiarelli unfortunately started to blow it about 30-45 minutes after drafting McDavid. Hiring Chiarelli and Nicholson that summer ended up being the worst decision they could have made.

A once in a life time global event causing a multi-year-long cap squeeze during the prime of McDavid and Draisaitl's careers certainly hasn't helped.
I'll never forgive Chiarelli for that disastrous 2016-17 offseason in which he prioritized getting cap space (which he ended up not using) over actually improving the team.
 
  • Like
Reactions: FiveFourteenSixOne
Yes. Now it's time to put up or shut up. Sid and Geno had less to work with.
Lolol in what world did the pens have less??

Ill wait.

Crosby was groomed the proper way also wheen he came into the league. The vets he had around him his first year or so, living with lemeuix. Guy had every corner covered to go with his talent
 
Last edited:
No, in the sense that the team hasn't won. Obviously.

Yes, in the sense that they were a lucky bounce away from winning just a few months ago. It's a bit difficult to argue that they were not good enough when they basically lost on a coin flip. They're also not owed a Cup just because they're some of the sport's biggest stars. Lots of world-class athletes fail to win shit for all sorts of reasons. It's not always someone else's fault or failure if championships don't materialise in a timely manner. Other teams are trying to win, too. I know it's annoying that they don't just roll over but it is what it is.
 

Ad

Ad

Upcoming events

Ad