Digger12
Gold Fever
The oilers always have a host of great looking players....as long as they are in junior. Bear is the only guy of recent that looks like he could be a steal. We have gone thorough dozens of good looking juniors that fail at the next level.
'Dozens' might be an exaggeration, but it's a valid point. Marincin, Gernat, Chase, Platzer, Moroz, Martindale, Bunz...the list goes on.
To be fair, it's not just an Oilers thing...lots of teams have similar lists if you take the time to look. It can't be understated how hard a jump it is to make it into becoming a full time NHLer, it's the best league in the world for a reason, and there's only so many jobs to go around.
What the Oilers lack is that one or two guys that surpass expectations and not only make the NHL roster, but become impact players. We've had a few guys that got close (Slepyshev IMO is an example), but for whatever reason just couldn't get over that last hurdle. The argument to be had is what caused someone like Slepy to fail: Was it ultimately his own lack of ability and/or fatal lack of hockey sense? Or was it the team not giving him the proper tools and coach's belief in him to succeed?