Another reason for the Oilers lack of success is bad amateur scouting and drafting along with some bad timing/luck. Since drafting Draisaitl and McDavid in the 14/15 drafts, none of their picks have really helped the team and that list includes a number of first and second rounders like Poolparty, Broberg, Yamamoto, Holloway, McLeod, Benson, and Lavoie. The only guy playing a significant role is Bouchard and he’s basically a PP specialist who’s a major liability 5v5 and the type of player who has minimal value around the league.
I can see the reasoning why they would keep their high picks hoping for homegrown talent who develop in the organization and hopefully contribute on lower cost ELC and bridge deals but it just never worked out with any of them and now they have zero scoring and defensive depth and have Campbell making 5M in the AHL.
Drafting and developing is a crapshoot and if your management and scouting staff doesn’t absolutely nail it, you can easily end up in a no man’s land of a failed rebuild which is where the Oil are now. In retrospect, they should have spent a bunch of those post McDrai draft picks trading for some actual NHL players who could have stepped in to fill the holes in their lineup and made them a legit contender several years ago instead of wasting their prime years with no support.
A few years ago it was looking like we were heading in the same direction but FA finally saw the obvious and fired Jimbo into the sun and brought in competent management who have made several astute moves to bolster the team with badly needed pieces like Hronek, Mikheyev, Kuzmenko, Cole, Soucy, DeSmith, Bleugar, Di Giuseppe, etc. Sure it cost some draft picks (much to the chagrin of some fans) but now we have a good team with a solid lineup who look like a contender while the Oil are in complete disarray and tied for last place with the woefully bad SJ Sharks.
