I'm a big believer in PC, his overall body of work for the Oilers has been very good IMO - and it seems like he really puts a lot of thought and time in to his work.
The one deal that sticks out as tremendously poor is the Reinhart deal. Doesn't make sense to me, he has consistently proven that hes great at scouting defenceman, but threw away assets that he is now holding dear for this guy. I guess he didn't trust the scouts for drafting purposes, but he trusted them for their opinion on Reinhart? Weird.
I think he's been a bit lucky with the goaltending situation at the NHL level, not only has talbot panned out as a starter, he's been a total beast in every way. If he gets injured we're still in trouble, I personally don't have any faith in Brossoit and didn't have any in Gus. From an entire organizational standpoint, however, he has done a good job getting us a variety of good goalies at various points in their careers that have a chance at becoming NHL goalies, for little assets.
Using free agency he added a top 4 D in Sekera, traded Hall for another top4 in Larsson, and then added Lucic to replace him depth-wise. Locked up Klefbom to a great contract pre-emptively, and while Klefbom himself is the main reason for his personal success, Chia saw the potential and provided some players around him that allowed him to develop in a good situation. He added a 3rd top 4D in Russell for free, at an average of 3.8 mil/5 yrs - nice stealth find to round out a top 4 that was non-existent before his arrival. I see Treliving get praise for the top4 he's assembled but the Oilers one has come a long way since PC took charge, and he deserves a lot of credit for getting our D to where it is now. He got us Benning for free, and he's held on to Nurse who both show a lot of promise as future top4D.
Forward-wise we've gone from having a group of forwards that were all too similar in size and style, and we were way too heavy on the wings and thin at center. Obviously mact gets credit for Draisaitl and Mcdavid is Mcdavid, but IMO PC has done a good job of balancing the forward core and using some of the redundant talent to shore up the D (hall-larsson). We went from having no centers and a slew of one-dimensional players to having one of the deepest center cores in the league, with versatility a theme throughout the lineup. Mcdavid, Draisaitl, RNH, Strome, Letestu, Jokinen are all potential C's, and we have Kassian, Lucic, Maroon, Puljujarvi and to a lesser degree Slep and Khaira as gigantic winger options that have varying degrees of talent to play all throughout the lineup.
While acquiring these players our prospect pool has gotten significantly deeper through decent drafting and some key college FA signings which are a real nice bonus. We've actually cleared cap space and haven't given up any significant picks outside of the Reinhart trade. While adding Lucic for free was nice the contract is definitely a little scary, maybe Looch will be at least decent until the end of the contract, or he'll go on LTIR, or there will be an amnesty buyout, etc... He is helping our team right now from a variety of fronts and I think it's worth it - time will tell.
Overall I see a lot of positives and not much negative. If you just take a snapshot of the organizational depth chart from the day PC took his job until today - it's an easy win - night and day difference. The club is run professionally, not every move is perfect and not everyone will agree with every move, but if you look at it with an open mind you can see PC has a plan and is enacting it, and that's a lot more than we had for the couple decades before him.
And he hired TMAC, who along with his staff have been amazing, they've put in a ton of work bringing this team from a complete joke to being in the conversation for SC contender. I could write just as much about him too, but the player development under him has been insane, literally all of our young players are taking off under his guidance.
