Fire Ken Holland: 2022-2023 edition

[GOilers88]

Everything posted online is an exercise in futility.

I'm doing this because its cold and grey outside yet again. Really no other reason at this time of year.

I think Kostin if Detroit is serious in using him will bag 20G this year and do all the punching/hitting he usually does.

Kostin isn't a throwaway. Several pundits had him topten in draft year. Interestingly he was always touted to have very good talent and shot. People at the time were saying his drawback was he needs to be more physical, which is interesting, as he's certainly responded to that criticism. He's a talent, and he plays hard and nails which I love. I'm different than most folks in that I also loved Raffi Torres. We all have our different likes.

Kostin, this is the worse Scenario, could be the reverse of the Joe Murphy scenario. Not in the pts sense but in the scoring goals sense. Murphy was a much better puck mover and pure sexy with the puck. I loved Joe here.

please don't say Shore again.

Your bookend comments are spot on, haha. Don't disagree there.

 

[Kanedogg]

Kostin, who has 16 goals TOTAL in 103 games in the NHL, is not worth 2 million
that's an overpayment for what he brings...he doesn't PK, he isn't used on the PP and is a bottom 6 player who has a good shot and plays physical once and awhile

No one said he was going to get 2 million here. He might have taken less to stay. The one hard we have is brown who is here for 750.

Holland ruined the cap on this team so bad that we have people insisting "so and so isn't a loss this team is better without them wait and see"

 

[Slats432]

Holland has made his mistakes. I'm not a fan of his first round selections since he took over and he bumbled the Nurse contract but everything else has been above average so far. I'll give Campbell 1 more season before I fully judge that deal but so far it's not looking good.

I would also suggest that the mistakes that were made are of league design/structure.

If you don't give the goalie 5 years, someone else will. You sign your players long term if they are good players. You give NMC to players because that is a process of the league.

We have to infer that all the goalie scouts liked Campbell. Didn't Woodley speak well of Campbell before during and after the signing?

 

[Soundwave]

2nd place in the Pacific in each of the 4 years that Holland has been in charge. got past the first round the past 2 years and people still complain about Holland. The previous GM had us miss the playoffs for 3 out of 4 years and handcuffed the team with contracts like Koskinen and Lucic.

Holland inherited this roster and turned it into a contending team. There's only 3 forwards and 1 Dmen from that roster on todays team. That's a huge turnover in 4 years.

RNH-Mcdavid-Rattie
Reider-Draisaitl-Yamamoto
Lucic-Brodziak-JP
Spooner-Khaira-Kassian

Nurse-Larsson
Russell-Benning
Manning-Petrovic

Talbot
Koskinen

Holland has made his mistakes. I'm not a fan of his first round selections since he took over and he bumbled the Nurse contract but everything else has been above average so far. I'll give Campbell 1 more season before I fully judge that deal but so far it's not looking good.

Not good enough. Just "better than Chiarelli" is nothing to be that proud of.

People forget this but great players still tend to need a lot of help.

Did Gretzky ever win anything without a full blown All-Star team around him? He needed Messier and Coffey and Anderson and Kurri and Fuhr, never won anything with out them, so how indebted is he to Sather, Fraser, and the rest of the Oilers front office? About as much as they are indebted to him I'd say.

Mario needed the Pens to pull Jagr out of their ass, and then also keep loading up on players like Coffey and Mullin and finding players like Recchi in the 4th round, etc. etc.

Crosby and Malkin? Won 1 but still needed MAF, then needed MAF and Murray and oh yeah a *third* top 10 scorer in the league in Kessel to win again. They've also played with a legit no.1 D for most of their careers in Letang and even as he was developing Gonchar, was a decent fill-in for a couple of years.

Ovechkin had loaded teams for years.

Oilers management is not on par with these situations, so effectively you are asking Connor and Leon to do a lot more than these other guys did.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

No one said he was going to get 2 million here. He might have taken less to stay. The one hard we have is brown who is here for 750.

no he wouldn't, he threatened to go to the KHL if he couldn't get the contract he wanted

Holland ruined the cap on this team so bad that we have people insisting "so and so isn't a loss this team is better without them wait and see"

Holland didn't ruin the cap..no more than Colorado or Toronto ruined their caps...they had to let good players go like Kadri and Burakovsky for the Avs...or Hyman, Bunting, or ROR for the Leafs because of the flat cap

this is utter nonsense

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

Not good enough. Just "better than Chiarelli" is nothing to be that proud of.

People forget this but great players still tend to need a lot of help.

Did Gretzky ever win anything without a full blown All-Star team around him? He needed Messier and Coffey and Anderson and Kurri and Fuhr, never won anything with out them, so how indebted is he to Sather, Fraser, and the rest of the Oilers front office? About as much as they are indebted to him I'd say.

Mario needed the Pens to pull Jagr out of their ass, and then also keep loading up on players like Coffey and Mullin and finding players like Recchi in the 4th round, etc. etc.

Crosby and Malkin? Won 1 but still needed MAF, then needed MAF and Murray and oh yeah a *third* top 10 scorer in the league in Kessel to win again. They've also played with a legit no.1 D for most of their careers in Letang and even as he was developing Gonchar, was a decent fill-in for a couple of years.

Ovechkin had loaded teams for years.

Oilers management is not on par with these situations, so effectively you are asking Connor and Leon to do a lot more than these other guys did.

you can't compare the 80s Oilers...when there was no salary cap....to today

as for the recent Pens, Crosby signed a 12-year contract that kept his AVV below his value that allowed them to add good players around him AND never had to deal with a flat cap back when they were winning

same deal with OV

 

[McShogun99]

Not good enough. Just "better than Chiarelli" is nothing to be that proud of.

People forget this but great players still tend to need a lot of help.

Did Gretzky ever win anything without a full blown All-Star team around him? He needed Messier and Coffey and Anderson and Kurri and Fuhr, never won anything with out them, so how indebted is he to Sather, Fraser, and the rest of the Oilers front office? About as much as they are indebted to him I'd say.

Mario needed the Pens to pull Jagr out of their ass, and then also keep loading up on players like Coffey and Mullin and finding players like Recchi in the 4th round, etc. etc.

Crosby and Malkin? Won 1 but still needed MAF, then needed MAF and Murray and oh yeah a *third* top 10 scorer in the league in Kessel to win again. They've also played with a legit no.1 D for most of their careers in Letang and even as he was developing Gonchar, was a decent fill-in for a couple of years.

Ovechkin had loaded teams for years.

Oilers management is not on par with these situations, so effectively you are asking Connor and Leon to do a lot more than these other guys did.

RNH, Hyman, Kane, Nurse, Ekholm and Bouchard are pretty good supporting players. We'll never see a team in todays NHL like the 80's Oilers, 90's Pens or pre cap Wings. If we didn't have a cap to work with then we'd probably be as stacked as those teams were. Holland essentially had to start from scratch with the mess that Chia left him which set our cup window back a few years.

 

[GOilers88]

Not good enough. Just "better than Chiarelli" is nothing to be that proud of.

People forget this but great players still tend to need a lot of help.

Did Gretzky ever win anything without a full blown All-Star team around him? He needed Messier and Coffey and Anderson and Kurri and Fuhr, never won anything with out them, so how indebted is he to Sather, Fraser, and the rest of the Oilers front office? About as much as they are indebted to him I'd say.

Mario needed the Pens to pull Jagr out of their ass, and then also keep loading up on players like Coffey and Mullin and finding players like Recchi in the 4th round, etc. etc.

Crosby and Malkin? Won 1 but still needed MAF, then needed MAF and Murray and oh yeah a *third* top 10 scorer in the league in Kessel to win again. They've also played with a legit no.1 D for most of their careers in Letang and even as he was developing Gonchar, was a decent fill-in for a couple of years.

Ovechkin had loaded teams for years.

Oilers management is not on par with these situations, so effectively you are asking Connor and Leon to do a lot more than these other guys did.

Ovechkin did have loaded teams for years. And it still took multiple early exits and 13 years to win a cup.

 

[Soundwave]

you can't compare the 80s Oilers...when there was no salary cap....to today

as for the recent Pens, Crosby signed a 12-year contract that kept his AVV below his value that allowed them to add good players around him AND never had to deal with a flat cap back when they were winning

same deal with OV

But you want the same Cup don't you?

Yes with a salary cap it is harder. That means your management has to be *more* on the ball, not less.

You can't casually make 3,4, 5 mistakes and just try to hand wave it away and then still say "well, OK fine, but where's my Cup?". It doesn't work like that either. Because the problem then is you'll run into a team like Colorado or Vegas who have managed their cap better and have better pro scouting or drafting or something and then they'll exploit your lack thereof in a 7 game series.

"1 good move for every bad move!" may be something that gets some Oiler fans in a tizzy as "good management!" but it's not. It's only viewed as such because you are used to pure shit management like Chiarelli. A lot of posters here were kids in 2006, they don't even remember the last time the Oilers had a legit good GM, Connor McDavid was 9 years old himself.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

But you want the same Cup don't you?

Yes with a salary cap it is harder. That means your management has to be *more* on the ball, not less.

You can't casually make 3,4, 5 mistakes and just try to hand wave it away and then still say "well, OK fine, but where's my Cup?". It doesn't work like that either. Because the problem then is you'll run into a team like Colorado or Vegas who have managed their cap better and have better pro scouting or drafting or something and then they'll exploit your lack thereof in a 7 game series.

"1 good move for every bad move!" may be something that gets some Oiler fans in a tizzy as "good management!" but it's not. It's only viewed as such because you are used to pure shit management like Chiarelli. A lot of posters here were kids in 2006, they don't even remember the last time the Oilers had a legit good GM.

Colorado and Vegas didn't manage their cap better, they got lucky with MacKinnon breaking out and scoring 100 points for 6.5 mil after several seasons being a 50 point player...now they're paying the price having to let go of good players like Kadri and Burakovsky due to cap reasons

Vegas got lucky that Mark Stone was instantly ready for Game 1 of the playoffs after being on LTIR for half the season, which allowed them to make trades for Barbashev...this after missing the playoffs the previous year

 

[Soundwave]

Colorado and Vegas didn't manage their cap better, they got lucky with MacKinnon breaking out and scoring 100 points for 6.5 mil after several seasons being a 50 point player...now they're paying the price having to let go of good players like Kadri and Burakovsky due to cap reasons

Vegas got lucky that Mark Stone was instantly ready for Game 1 of the playoffs after being on LTIR for half the season, which allowed them to make trades for Barbashev...this after missing the playoffs the previous year

Maybe they did get lucky with the MacK contract, but they took full advantage of it and they didn't have several poor contracts on the books beyond that on top of Lucic/Neal's 2 mill in dead cap. That's why they could load up on players like Kadri, Burakovsky, Manson, Toews, etc.

They got a no.4 pick on top of MacK + Rant ... they turned that pick into Makar, the Oilers skipped on Tkachuk to take Puljujarvi when handed a no.4 pick. Now sure we can make all the excuses in the world about why that happened, but at the end of the day they have a Stanley Cup because they took full advantage of situations.

Luck is often when opportunity meets preparation, Colorado was ready when good fortune came knocking at their door they took full advantage.

Ditto for Vegas, that roster depth is basically all pro scouting and some brass balls in never being satisfied with a roster.

 

[Kanedogg]

no he wouldn't, he threatened to go to the KHL if he couldn't get the contract he wanted

Holland didn't ruin the cap..no more than Colorado or Toronto ruined their caps...they had to let good players go like Kadri and Burakovsky for the Avs...or Hyman, Bunting, or ROR for the Leafs because of the flat cap

this is utter nonsense

Colorado got what they wanted. I agree Toronto ruined their cap by overpaying players.

It's possible for more than one gm to suck at cap management.

At the end of the day the next gm is going to be in an awful spot with players much better than bjugstad and kostin when he is forced to see what to do with McLeod and Bouchard. This is all from a series of bad contracts by Holland.

 

[Whyme]

So Yamamoto's actual value for this year is 1.5 million. Holland said that he signed the current deal because he hoped the cap could go up. To me this sounds like a bad excuse. I mean when the cap goes up is it then fine to pay plenty of extra? Here's the quote:

"I like 'Yammo,' and when we did (his last contract) I had no idea what the (NHL salary) cap was going to be this year, hoping that we could catch up and get the cap moving," Oilers general manager Ken Holland said after the trade. "The cap doesn't move, it goes from 82.5 to 83.5 (million) so we have to make difficult decisions."

Yamamoto signs 1-year contract with Kraken | NHL.com

Forward had 25 points for Oilers last season, was traded to Red Wings

www.nhl.com

 

[KeithIsActuallyBad]

Colorado and Vegas didn't manage their cap better, they got lucky with MacKinnon breaking out and scoring 100 points for 6.5 mil after several seasons being a 50 point player...now they're paying the price having to let go of good players like Kadri and Burakovsky due to cap reasons

Vegas got lucky that Mark Stone was instantly ready for Game 1 of the playoffs after being on LTIR for half the season, which allowed them to make trades for Barbashev...this after missing the playoffs the previous year

It'd be nice to snag a Devon Toews-like player for cheap then sign him to an incredibly cheap deal.

But those things don't tend to happen here.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

It'd be nice to snag a Devon Toews-like player for cheap then sign him to an incredibly cheap deal.

But those things don't tend to happen here.

Ekholm is a solid consolation prize

 

[KeithIsActuallyBad]

Seen enough. Can him.

 

[Kanedogg]

Ceci, Kane, Brown, Campbell, skinner, Nurse contract all looking like busts.

 

[Oilers]

Holland is up and down. Makes some good moves and some horrible ones. Unfortunately in the salary cap environment, any bad moves really put us up against wall.

He’s a mid to lower tier GM these days at best.

 

[Ritchie Valens]

Holland is up and down. Makes some good moves and some horrible ones. Unfortunately in the salary cap environment, any bad moves really put us up against wall.

He’s a mid to lower tier GM these days at best.

Like a toilet seat.

(Sorry, I had to.)

 

[KeithIsActuallyBad]

Time to move on from him.

 

[Mr Kot]

If Jackson is already in charge, just let him go now and start putting your own touch on the team. This is the same team since Holland took over, even with new personnel through the years, they play and look the same every year. New coaches and scouts, let everyone know that this is a team where you have to earn your place, let hungry players play, and sit the lazy ones until they start playing hard as well. No more giving out contracts based on hype and potential, earn it.

 

[Ritchie Valens]

@Behind Enemy Lines

Figured I'd move this over to the Holland thread from the GDT.

I gave Holland the first year a grace period because of Chiarelli's cap nuking. No one could have predicted Klefbom's shoulder spelled the end of his career either, or Larsson pulling a fast one and bolting instead of being upfront. But the second year on, he squandered a significant amount of cap space just like his predecessor did and here we are again. A sub-performing team with no cap room to do anything, or as he says unless it's dollar in-dollar out. The wash-rinse-repeat of holes still exist. That's why I'm not quick to blame Woodcroft but I do wish they kept Playfair (unless he said if Tipp is going, I'm out too).

My thought process is much different than your's obviously with Holland at this stage of his tenure by saying he still has big work to do to get this team to championship level, sorry man. He's had 4 years (excluding year 1) to do that and they're no closer than they were the day he took over in my opinion. The fans with rose colored glasses on will argue and say otherwise but this 23-24 Oilers version is no where near a cup appearance let alone a cup win at this moment in time. It's just not there. I firmly believe goaltending wins championships over and above anything else first and I don't see 16 playoff wins with either goalie, especially with this defensive corps.

 

[Behind Enemy Lines]

@Behind Enemy Lines

Figured I'd move this over to the Holland thread from the GDT.

I gave Holland the first year a grace period because of Chiarelli's cap nuking. No one could have predicted Klefbom's shoulder spelled the end of his career either, or Larsson pulling a fast one and bolting instead of being upfront. But the second year on, he squandered a significant amount of cap space just like his predecessor did and here we are again. A sub-performing team with no cap room to do anything, or as he says unless it's dollar in-dollar out. The wash-rinse-repeat of holes still exist. That's why I'm not quick to blame Woodcroft but I do wish they kept Playfair (unless he said if Tipp is going, I'm out too).

My thought process is much different than your's obviously with Holland at this stage of his tenure by saying he still has big work to do to get this team to championship level, sorry man. He's had 4 years (excluding year 1) to do that and they're no closer than they were the day he took over in my opinion. The fans with rose colored glasses on will argue and say otherwise but this 23-24 Oilers version is no where near a cup appearance let alone a cup win at this moment in time. It's just not there. I firmly believe goaltending wins championships over and above anything else first and I don't see 16 playoff wins with either goalie, especially with this defensive corps.

The trajectory of this team fundamentally changed when its maturing d-corp conked out. A healthy Klefbom you don't see a $9 million Nurse happen. Larsson's Dad doesn't die tragically in Edmonton, they likely have a beast shutdown d-man. I say these not as excuses but hard reality of how this team's needs had to shift and evolve. They had to plug holes at d, goaltending, and forward. All the while McDavid, Draisaitl, Nugent Hopkins and a whack of spare parts were working their way into peak years performance.

My thought process has consistently been that this team isn't good enough, notably that it needed two top four defensemen to be anywhere near NHL championship level. I identified Ekholm as a perfect fit as one and still think they need a top 4 RD to have anywhere near a legitimate Cup level defense. Goaltending is questionable and bottom six forward group is needing at least one hard, physical veteran 4/3C. Hardly rose colour glasses as far as how I view this team's gaps and needs.

On top of personnel, I was very clear for a long time that their defensive systems were not a good fit for this team's personnel. The man to man defensive system was badly exposed by Vegas. It exposed coverage gaps between Oiler d and forwards as well as the poor decision making of several of its top players. Again, I'm not sure what you think are my rose coloured glasses are about this time. I'm fully in pragmatic mode about their gaps in terms of mental approach, personnel limitations, and flawed decision making at critical times.

Vegas has shown a blueprint where rock solid system play, backstopped by a big, elite and deep defensive corp and supported by committed, disciplined two-way forward group can overcome the loss of a number one goaltender to not just make the playoffs, but win a division, and then roll through to win a Cup. Other teams crater when losing their number one goaltender as I've cited. Vegas actually improved their goals against in the regular season with four different tenders used. Then did the same in the playoffs.

So to summarize, I see the Oilers as good enough to beat any team in the league. Can they beat the elite Cup contender teams over seven games? I'm not confident yet in this until my above questions are answered. Can Holland be better? Sure, of course. But this wasn't going to be fixed in one year after Chiarelli carpet bombed this franchise. They were an expensive cap threshold lottery team with a hollowed out roster and little to no prospect pool.

 

[I am the Liquor]

Fire this dinosaur

 

[ConnorNova0929]

Bob Nicholson legacy will be hiring Chiarelli and then following it up with Kenny Holland lol