They don't actually need to upgrade the d, they went to the Cup final with this D and did so while being one of the best defensive teams in the playoffs, and the goaltending wasn't even that great for two out of four rounds. The reason they lost in the Cup Final is because they couldn't find a couple of goals when they needed them.
The Oilers biggest issue in the playoffs was goal scoring. That's why they went out and signed goal scorers. Don't get distracted by arguments from people who haven't been paying attention to the team.
It's insane that a team that held the Panthers to under 2 goals a game for the final four games of a Cup Final is getting criticized for their D. It just isn't the problem that outsiders make it out to be.
Yeah, it SEEMS kinda crazy how little other fans know about the Oilers. But it makes a lot of sense actually. I don't know any other team well enough to really talk about what their needs are in any great detail. The average fan of any given team knows 10x more than even paid hockey commentators on TSN or Sportsnet do about that same team, let alone some random on HFboards.
I agree with you 100% though. The reason we didn't win game 7, and didn't win (even though we dominated) 2 of the other games in the series, was because of lack of scoring. I know everybody has this image of what the Oilers are in their heads, but it wasn't actually true in the finals. When we went against an elite defensive team, we weren't able to bury our chances. Yes, a lot of that was due to the many injuries we had in our "one shot scorers", in that McDavid couldn't really shoot, Drai had a broken rib, and Kane wasn't playing at all due to injury. Those are our 3 best "shooters" on the entire team. But the fact is we didn't have other players that were able to bury the multitude of chances we had. Our D, while not elite, was more than adequate actually.
Again, its not surprising other fans don't know this, like, why would they? You have to know a team inside and out to have a nuanced discussion about that team. It's why I don't comment on other teams very much, because you end up sounding very dumb (like some posters in this thread do talking about the Oilers).