I mean, they had a reasonable understanding of where both of these guys would land contract wise from the sounds of it. Whether they wanted to hand out that money or not is entirely on them, and whether we thought it was fair or not is always irrelevant.
Instead they took that money and went for Skinner and Arvidsson. Right or wrong, good or bad. They expected these two kids to take close to or league minimum so they could go spending. Now it seems like a general sentiment is screw those two, McDavid and Drai are only going to make 12/13 million a year so they should have been happy with whatever they got offered.
I like the Skinner signing and I hope he plays well. But looking at it now, I would have been just as fine using his money to lock in Broberg at least, and likely Holloway too.
I look at it a bit differently. This season and last when your team is adding a buncha of old hockey players like Perry, Brown, Arvie, Skinner than its a signal that minutes will be limited for topsix, or for anything, for other young forwards.
The Oilers have gone so hard in a vets direction that they around the oldest team in the league and getting older.
Its the thing that whenever the Oilers sign some vet people are going nuts how good a move this is when really the cap reality is that there will be player cost down the road. i.e. losing players.
Unfortunately its the young fast players that play with pace that we are losing.
But a lot of fans always seem to prefer the "name" players over development players. Which is odd to see on Hockey futures.