Rumor: Rumors & Proposals Thread | With Klingberg in the Mix Who Are Our 7D After the Deadline?

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I think we could get by with just one actual top six winger:

RNH-McD-Hyman
?-Drai-Arvidsson

The trick is that player MUST be better than RV, making him the sixth best player in the rotation. I don’t think we would mind him as much then, and he’d get to disappear in the play more which is what makes him so effective. It’s a short list of options for ? though.

What do we with the mess that is Podz, Henrique, Perry, Skinner, Brown, Kane, Kap, etc.? I dunno, but Bowman caused it so it’s job to fix it.

I agree that one good top 6 winger fixes so much for this team. It slots one of our current top 6 to the bottom 6 and everything will just fall into place.

I was high on Arvidsson, I'll admit it, but he is killing the top 6 right now and I actually think he would be a good feisty 3rd liner.

We NEEDED wingers for Drai and we still don't have it........
 
That last bit tells me that the issue is most likely that the Oilers just don't give Schwartz much to work with. The proof that he isn't good is only a few goaltenders underperforming.

For instance, Chabot has had 5 different goalies to work with in Minnesota, a couple were duds. Minnesota is an organization that believes in goaltending. It's not voodoo to them. It's real. They bring in Fluery and Talbot. They draft Wallstedt. They trade for Kahkonen. They trade for Gustavsson. It's an organic process of trying things, and making thoughtful decisions.

Our big swing was Campbell. A totally thoughtless and stupid gamble. Also signing Pickard out of a bargain bin, which is a win but it's aiming low and hitting that mark.

Our pride in our goaltending comes from how little cap space we spend. Yippee
Minnesota and the Oilers approach to goaltending is pretty much polar opposite. The Wild - who under Guerin are building a formidable team - have aggressively moved for high quality established goaltenders never settling for retreads. And they moved aggressively into the first round to draft and develop a high pedigree goaltender that fell to the Oilers drafting position. They have a coherent organizational strategy that is building up a formidable blueline and prospective #1 drafted and developed goaltending.

The Oilers under several failed organizational regimes continued to plug away at roster holes in all areas with no coherent strategic approach. Arguable the game's most important position has been an after though for a decade tied to a rotating cast of old, broken down retread and flawed age 30+ goaltenders with a hap hazard draft approach of hoping that a succession of mid/late round dice roll draft picks might sift through to find an NHL level prospect goaltender.

They f*** away this team's elite window years on a terrible, expensive dice roll on Jack Campbell and default to a mid-level prospect goaltender with physical limitations to paddle through his development years as a de facto #1 goaltender. Instead of course correcting like a Minnesota organization would do, Oilers management doubles down to ride the wildly inconsistent development phase of Skinner. They chose adding expensive forwards like J Skinner and Arvy over retooling between the pipes. The Wild moved off journeyman Talbot quickly when they aggressively moved on Fleury.

A hard truth is that their only NHL goalie developed in over a decade is one that was built, nurtured and developed by Schwartz. The guy has actually had success with developing raw junior prospect tenders into NHL goaltenders. It stands up with probably anyone quite frankly. But a goaltender coach is not going to magically turn deeply established and fully formed journeymen into suddenly elite one's required by a mature veteran window team. That's just entirely unrealistic and the logic doesn't carry over to any other skill position coach in any other at apex level of competitive sports. Airlifting Manny Legace to Bakersfield to 'save and rescue' a failed Jack Campbell did not magically revive his career away from Schwartz.

I've said this team should get a 1A goaltender (Gibson looks like a good fit) and run a higher end tandem with Skinner. Make it a competition and move Skinner into the growth support role he was always envisioned for behind a #1 during this critical window phase. Advocated also that this organization should have invested in a high pedigree goaltender over the past 3-5 years to build up an elite prospect option for the mid-to-long term sustaining phase of a desired window phase.

This is a strategic management issue. Point the arrows up where it belongs. Over to you Stan Bowman... even if you won two Cups with a midlevel Crawford in net.
 
In a world we do trade for a goalie I just hope Skinner goes and Picard stays.

Skinner seems like the kind of guy that would be a bad back up? Picard has been a good back up?

I have to admit I don't know much about goaltending, what do ya'll think?
I actually think stu would be awesome as a 1b when he doesn't have the pressure of being the guy. But I don't think he would have the positive attitude he portrays not being the guy. I mean in his interviews it never seems to be his fault
 
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Really need a player like Holloway in the top 6 in the worst way possible. A top 5 defenseman who can skate and defend, a top 6 forward who can skate and score. A goaltender who isnt constantly letting the team down and for ffs fire Schwartz. Bowman should be canned if teams like the Canucks, Knights, Flames come away improving more than the Oilers after the deadline.

This guy has been trying to fix his mistakes through the waiver wire all season. Unacceptable.
 
I actually think stu would be awesome as a 1b when he doesn't have the pressure of being the guy. But I don't think he would have the positive attitude he portrays not being the guy. I mean in his interviews it never seems to be his fault
He would become worse because it would mean the organization has given up on him being a starter.
 
Minnesota and the Oilers approach to goaltending is pretty much polar opposite. The Wild - who under Guerin are building a formidable team - have aggressively moved for high quality established goaltenders never settling for retreads. And they moved aggressively into the first round to draft and develop a high pedigree goaltender that fell to the Oilers drafting position. They have a coherent organizational strategy that is building up a formidable blueline and prospective #1 drafted and developed goaltending.

The Oilers under several failed organizational regimes continued to plug away at roster holes in all areas with no coherent strategic approach. Arguable the game's most important position has been an after though for a decade tied to a rotating cast of old, broken down retread and flawed age 30+ goaltenders with a hap hazard draft approach of hoping that a succession of mid/late round dice roll draft picks might sift through to find an NHL level prospect goaltender.

They f*** away this team's elite window years on a terrible, expensive dice roll on Jack Campbell and default to a mid-level prospect goaltender with physical limitations to paddle through his development years as a de facto #1 goaltender. Instead of course correcting like a Minnesota organization would do, Oilers management doubles down to ride the wildly inconsistent development phase of Skinner. They chose adding expensive forwards like J Skinner and Arvy over retooling between the pipes. The Wild moved off journeyman Talbot quickly when they aggressively moved on Fleury.

A hard truth is that their only NHL goalie developed in over a decade is one that was built, nurtured and developed by Schwartz. The guy has actually had success with developing raw junior prospect tenders into NHL goaltenders. It stands up with probably anyone quite frankly. But a goaltender coach is not going to magically turn deeply established and fully formed journeymen into suddenly elite one's required by a mature veteran window team. That's just entirely unrealistic and the logic doesn't carry over to any other skill position coach in any other at apex level of competitive sports. Airlifting Manny Legace to Bakersfield to 'save and rescue' a failed Jack Campbell did not magically revive his career away from Schwartz.

I've said this team should get a 1A goaltender (Gibson looks like a good fit) and run a higher end tandem with Skinner. Make it a competition and move Skinner into the growth support role he was always envisioned for behind a #1 during this critical window phase. Advocated also that this organization should have invested in a high pedigree goaltender over the past 3-5 years to build up an elite prospect option for the mid-to-long term sustaining phase of a desired window phase.

This is a strategic management issue. Point the arrows up where it belongs. Over to you Stan Bowman... even if you won two Cups with a midlevel Crawford in net.

I'm not sure why you're using Minnesota as a team to aspire to. They tried to trade Gustavsson for peanuts in the off-season, and now he's a top-10 goalie this year. That wasn't by Bill Guerin's design.
Fleury was a sub .900 goalie in 40 games last year.
That hotshot goalie that he drafted in. the first round is floundering in the AHL with a 0.871 SV%, which is worse than their other undrafted goalie of almost the same age.

Minnesota hasn't been a better team than Edmonton at any point during Guerin's tenure.
 
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I'm not sure why you're using Minnesota as a team to aspire to. They tried to trade Gustavsson for peanuts in the off-season, and now he's a top-10 goalie this year. That wasn't by Bill Guerin's design.
Fleury was a sub .900 goalie in 40 games last year.
That hotshot goalie that he drafted in. the first round is floundering in the AHL with a 0.871 SV%, which is worse than their other undrafted goalie of almost the same age.

Minnesota hasn't been a better team than Edmonton at any point during Guerin's tenure.
I was piggybacking on the poster's comment with cited Minnesota. There's better models off building a sustaining pipeline of quality NHL goaltenders and prospect pools. Fact remains that Minnesota has built into their strategic plan a short-term approach to improve its goaltending and a long-term one as well. They haven't settled. Goaltending is also a product of team defense. They are a team playing essentially short handed with the big cap penalty for flushing Suter and Parise yet continued to be competitive. Think there's a viable rationale for goaltender statistics based upon the bigger hard organization decisions that were made with the future in mind.

The hotshot goaltender prospect is where he needs to be. Again it's hard to separate goaltender stats from team play so I'd have to look at their farm team to gage the hotshot's actual development path. There's a coherent development plan in place. Whether he gets there is still to be written.

Conversely the Oilers approach has been to invest everywhere else and hope goaltending will hold up. Then they blew their wad on a highly questionable veteran leaving a mid-level prospect to step into the fire.

EDIT: Evaluating a first ballot HOF goaltender's impact solely on SAV% is extremely limited to the depth of leadership, mentorship, and overall consistency the guy has delivered. They've had solid goaltending from him through a retool phase and essentially another goaltender coach/mentor available to their whole team.
 
I agree that one good top 6 winger fixes so much for this team. It slots one of our current top 6 to the bottom 6 and everything will just fall into place.

I was high on Arvidsson, I'll admit it, but he is killing the top 6 right now and I actually think he would be a good feisty 3rd liner.

We NEEDED wingers for Drai and we still don't have it........
I'd rather keep skinner over Arvidsson. Dunno why Arvidsson continues to get top 6 minutes while skinner does not
 
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A take that is aging like year-old milk already lmao. Necas 1+1 tonight, 7 points overall in his new home. Oh, and his speed has helped MacKinnon net 3A against Calgary to take back the scoring lead.

Meanwhile Rantanen has but two points in five games for Carolina.

It’s ALMOST like a management team that has won a Cup in recent memory knows what they’re doing.

It has been 5 games so clearly the Avs won this trade in a landslide.
 
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Really need a player like Holloway in the top 6 in the worst way possible. A top 5 defenseman who can skate and defend, a top 6 forward who can skate and score. A goaltender who isnt constantly letting the team down and for ffs fire Schwartz. Bowman should be canned if teams like the Canucks, Knights, Flames come away improving more than the Oilers after the deadline.

This guy has been trying to fix his mistakes through the waiver wire all season. Unacceptable.
Deadline is still a month away and those teams paid extraordinary prices for what they got. We’re also 3rd in the league so that’s probably why the team isn’t making any panic trades.
 
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I sincerely hope they take the break to have a serious conversation about the goaltending. I don't have any answers, but something needs to be done because this team is very good and could be outstanding with just a little help.

Koskinen f***ing sucked give me a break LMAO
I agree, but Dustin Schwartz is here through both
 
The bottom 6 honestly I don't think we should spend a ton on it. We have a shit ton of players there and they do pot the odd goal here so it's not like they don't produce anything. They're not the problem with the team.

The biggest problems on the team are Stuart Skinner, Arvidsson becoming Yamamoto 2.0 (the shitty version), and probably needing a bit more depth on D are issues no.1/2/3.

You can probably grab like a Sam Lafferty for not a lot.
 
I think that Skinner is approaching the point where management will have to address his inconsistency.

When the team does not perform well the head coach and often most of his staff gets canned. We have certainly seen this over and over with this team. Why would the goalie coach be the one guy to avoid consequences? Because the GM did not provide him with quality to work with? If this was a valid explanation for the goalie coach why would it not also apply to every other coach?
Except every other coach has a steady supply of talent to work with. Look at how pleased we are with Coffey coaching the defense. Our defense improved but our GMs have invested so much there. Bouchard and Nurse are top 10 picks. The Ekholm trade was done with a lot of hard work and trade capital. The team has aggressively cycled talent through the depth. This approach goes double for the forward core. Goaltending? There is every indication that management believes that goaltending is not where you spend your time and money. Just put someone cheap there and believe the rest of the team will pick up the slack.

My point isn't that I believe Schwartz is great goalie coach. My point is that it is hard to know how good is because he's had so little to work with.

When you have an issue with a position the simplest explanation is that it's a player issue.
 
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Deadline is still a month away and those teams paid extraordinary prices for what they got. We’re also 3rd in the league so that’s probably why the team isn’t making any panic trades.
That's kinda true. However after the holiday there is exactly 11 playing days before the deadline. Its always good not to panic but they really need to have a plan together and a plan B. They should have their collective poop together now.
 

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