alphahelix
Registered User
- Feb 15, 2007
- 7,227
- 3,059
When people say the Oilers should have been “proactive”, I’m not entirely sure what they mean by it.
You can be as proactive as you want. It still takes two sides to agree to a contract.
I find this line of reasoning to be both true and completely disingenuous.
We know that Oilers management prioritized UFAs, Hiring a GM, and signing Draisaitl to guarantee the long term cap structure - in that order. They told us as much. They had qualifying offers out to these guys, and maybe there were some lowball starter offers out there that have henceforth gone unreported or discussed.
At the end of the day, if they prioritized signing these guys to reasonable deals, they for certain could have had Holloway out of the equation at a minimum. Maybe Broberg was looking offer sheet from the get-go, but prioritizing these negotiations could have potentially circumvented all of this.
I’d argue that based on what we know it’s MORE counterfactual to suggest that “it takes two to tango / the players didnt want to sign here” than to say that “we could have signed them if we prioritized them”.