oobga
Tier 2 Fan
- Aug 1, 2003
- 24,950
- 21,254
Not much change is needed, just a little tinkering, if the Oilers weren’t limping in the finals they’d be Stanley Cup Champions, why change what worked.
IMO, the run depended on too few players having a legendary run. You can't take for granted McDavid and Bouch breaking multi-decade records again. Some of the limping was also because we failed to close out the Canucks quicker. There were some pretty bad periods in that series, much born from having a weak bottom 2 D pairs. The bottom 2 D pairs also costed us in the finals and played a big part in digging the early hole.
We also can't take the new coach bump for granted. Almost the exact same lineup looked like they couldn't even play hockey for over a month to start last year. We all know the weaknesses in this lineup. Top 6 wingers are not good enough, we always seem to leave Drai with garbage. No top 6 winger we have can actually carry a puck themselves and make plays 5v5 (Nuge cannot do this, no matter how much we wish he could), so when the whistle goes away, teams just need to tackle McDavid. We know the bottom 2 D pairs are not good, Knob had to make constant adjustments to try to figure out how to minimize the liability they were throughout the playoffs and regular season. I'm hopeful that Skinner can keep improving, so maybe goaltending is OK.
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