McFlyingV
Registered User
They may be gone and there's a lot of truth in your post about terrible management, but if they're gone it's not because they can't afford them. I swear some of you don't even bother to look at cap friendly or stay up to date with projected cap growth.That ship has sailed. The Edmonton Oilers have wasted both these players being together by poor asset management and poor cap management. The team is up against the cap with Draisitle entering the final year of his current contract and McDavid 2 years after. Draisaitl is as good as gone. Maybe even after these playoffs in the offseason. They cannot afford his next contract. Especially if the Organization has hopes in re-signing McDavid. The Organization royally screwed things up here and wasted a 1-2 punch that the league hasn't seen in decades.
Here's a quick breakdown for you since you didn't seem to do your homework.
2025 (when Drai's contract is up): Off the books: Neal buyout 2mil, Cody Ceci out 3.25mil and cap likely to be 8mil+ higher than this season. Currently Drai (8.5) and Bouchard (3.9) could have an additional 12.25 mil to sign (assuming 1mil replacecement for Ceci). Meaning they'll have a combined 24.65mil or more to sign Drai and Bouchard.
2026 (when McDavid's contract is up): Expect another 3-4 mil cap raise, Kane off the books (5.125mil), and Ekholm (6mil) + Kulak (2.75M) contracts finished. If you replace those 3 players with 10mil of cap you're looking at an extra 8 mil to pay McDavid up to a 20.5mil contract.
Now ultimately its up to those two if they want to re-sign, but the Oilers can easily make the money work even without shipping out bad contracts.
This is a lazy argument. You really can't get any lazier than this. Every playoffs they show up. They put up historical point totals. They put up elite advanced metrics. And I'll save you some time since I already know you're going to say "did you see McDavid leave Boeser all alone on the 2nd goal last night". Yeah I can pick out instances like that from every cup winning leader of the last 10 years if I went back through every one of their playoff games.Edmonton has a leadership problem.
The 2 best players in the NHL and neither one of them are leaders of any kind.
They both need to learn how to be better at the whole team game thing (which is why Vancouver are kicking Edmontons ass).