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Channeling their Chi- Oilers fire Chiarelli


yave1964

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  Apparently all that it took was losing to the worst team in Hockey, record wise, the Detroit red Wings for the Oilers to finally say enough.

 

  After a 3-2 regulation loss to the Wings last night Peter Chiarelli was relieved of his duties as GM. A little too late for some as yet another season of the brilliant McDavid and Draisatl appears to have been wasted with them being surrounded by a bunch of zeroes.

 

Under Chiarelli:

 

  Eberle was let go for Strome who turned into Spooner who turned into nothing.

 

  Griffin Reinhart was acquired for a first rounder which turned into Matthew Barzal. Reinhart is one of the biggest flops ever.

 

 Taylor Hall was turned into Adam Larsson and the ghost of Milan Lucic.

 

Gave Justin Schultz away for a third rounder who is never going to play in the NHL.

 

 His drafting has been as bad as his trades.

 

  I get the hire, I got it at the time, a recent Cup winning GM who was available came in, promised changes and made them, most if not all bombed and bombed badly.

 

  Just picture the Oilers with Hall on the top line, Schultz in for Larsson, Barzal centering or playing wing on the second line and Eberle as a scoring middle six winger. 

 

  The worst is Craig MacTavish is now in charge again of personnel decisions. Ugh. 

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Chiarelli out, eh?

Does this mean Chuck Fletcher is the next man in? Oh wait....

Seriously though...
Calling Ron Hextall, calling Ron Hextall….
Complete Philadelphia rebuild plan (now with 40% more McDavid and Draisaitl) in Edmonton and stick it in the face of the impatient Holmgren who opted for store brand GM'ing….. :ph34r:

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I really don't think that the firing means very much at all. Peter Chiarelli was a terrible General Manager who was part of a terrible management group. By leaving the rest of the rot (Lowe, MacTavish, etc) to smell up the room, nothing will change. If Chiarelli was THAT close to being fired, then why was he allowed to sign Mikko Koskinen to a (shall I be charitable here?) 4-year deal for $4.5M when he has under 30 NHL games under his belt less than 48-hours before he was sacked? Simple answer: the rest of the Keystone cops signed off on it as well, and they decided it was time to sacrifice Chiarelli to appease the fans.

 

Nothing will change.

Nothing will improve.

Nothing will get better.

 

@yave1964, do you remember when you told me, a couple of years ago, that I should be a little more optimistic about their chances? This is why I wasn't able to feel that way. The sheer amount of incompetence which I have witnessed is the sort of thing of which books could (and likely) will be written. I have absolutely, unreservedly, and literally no amount of confidence in this group's ability to get the job done at NHL level. They CONSISTENTLY think that their team is much better than it really is, indicating that they don't know how to properly assess talent, whether it's their own or another team's. This is the least thing that hockey men should be able to do.

 

Since this unending rebuild began, they have drafted 74 hockey players outside of the 1st round. Their roster is currently sporting three of those guys (Kyle Brodziak, Jujhar Kaira, Tobias Reider) and they have  7 goals among them this season. Let that sink for a moment. They always have a boatload of excuses about injuries or schedule or something else, but they never publicly point the finger at themselves. Even IF Keith Gretzky is made GM and is capable, he still has to deal with the rest of those stooges.

 

Do you want to know something really, really, REALLY awful? As Rob Tychowski of the Edmonton Sun put it:

 

If the Oilers magically hired the best GM in the world, it will take years of McDavid's prime to get this cleaned up.

 

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24 minutes ago, TropicalFruitGirl26 said:

Calling Ron Hextall, calling Ron Hextall….

 

I'm not sure this is the guy you want unless you just want to rebuild your farm system. Bringing in free agents ain't Ron strong suit.

 

But if you do maybe the Flyers can send them some of his coveted free agents.

 

Andrew Macdonald, Michal Neuvirth, Dale Weise and Jori Lehtera said they love Alberta. Ready and willing.

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I've never worked in hockey (so what the hell do *I* know?) but I would:

 

-Relieve Lowe, MacTavish, Sutter, and Howson of their duties. Bob Nicholson would be on thin ice with me. He was brought in from Hockey Canada to assess how the team is run at all levels, and the first guy he brought in was a disastrous GM. They need people who can properly assess talent. Immediately. Is that somebody like Mark Hunter? Can they hire Steve Yzerman if they stand outside of his house with a boom box held in the air?

-I would tell interim management to NOT do whatever it takes to make the playoffs this year.

-Keep the high draft picks, keep the young talent in their teens/early 20s, keep the plus prospects.

-Move the expiring UFA contracts (Gravel, Chiasson, Talbot, Petrovic) before the end of the season. Whatever you can get is what you get.

-Move the  dead weight contracts (Manning, Spooner) but do not pay out assets or value in doing so, and DO NOT BUY THEM OUT! Don't buy them out. Just don't. Especially the Lucic contract.

-Andrej Sekera possibly needs to permanently be moved to LTIR.

-Except for Lucic, the gross contracts are all off the books within 2 years. Their opportunities will be there if they don't do anything stupid.

-End the now decade-long cycle of draft, rush, move for pennies on the dollar.

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1 minute ago, OccamsRazor said:

 

I'm not sure this is the guy you want unless you just want to rebuild your farm system. Bringing in free agents ain't Ron strong suit.

 

But if you do maybe the Flyers can send them some of his coveted free agents.

 

Andrew Macdonald, Michal Neuvirth, Dale Weise and Jori Lehtera said they love Alberta. Ready and willing.

 

Well, the ninja DID indicate my seriousness on this.

If it WERE a simple matter of swapping out GM's, then maybe Hextall wouldn't be a bad choice (I will ALWAYS give him credit for doing an admirable job of cleaning Homer's mess best he could, in the time given), however, JR already hit the nail on the head by pointing out that this franchise's issues run far deeper than a simple GM switch.

Alas, wholesale changes at the management level are going to need to happen....much like they did with Tampa Bay some years ago.
The Bolts were for a long time, the laughing stock of the league, and it wasn't until era-changing decisions were made, such as front office and even ownership changes took place, that the franchise was rescued.

Similar things may need to happen in Edmonton.

Question becomes, how much of one the best players on the planet's prime does one waste before realizing this?

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2 minutes ago, TropicalFruitGirl26 said:

Alas, wholesale changes at the management level are going to need to happen....much like they did with Tampa Bay some years ago.

 

Yes i think Lowe and Mactavish are still around to screw it up i think...not sure if Lowe is still around.

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Just now, OccamsRazor said:

 

Yes i think Lowe and Mactavish are still around to screw it up i think...not sure if Lowe is still around.

 

Kevin Lowe is (along with Wayne Gretzky) the Vice-Chair of the Oilers Entertainment Group, and also serves as Alternate Governor. He does a lot of work on the business side of things (a job which he is said to be good at) but also spends a LOT of time involved in day-to-day hockey ops.

 

That's the part which I don't like. At all.

 

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http://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/25829485/peter-chiarelli-fired-edmonton-oilers-general-manager

 

https://deadspin.com/the-oilers-finally-fired-peter-chiarelli-who-did-so-li-1831980105

 

The Edmonton Oilers under GM Peter Chiarelli have been a slow-motion car crash, in that everyone can see—has seen, and has said so!—his bad moves as they’re happening. There is no hindsight involved here. And they’ve just kept piling up.

There was the trade of two draft picks (one of whom became reigning Calder champ Mathew Barzal) for Griffin Reinhart, who is now out of the organization and scuffling in the AHL.


There was the one-for-one trade of former first overall pick Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson; two years later Hall won MVP.
There was the seven-year, $42-million contract given to Milan Lucic, who appears to have fallen off a cliff on the wrong side of age 30, and is still signed through 2023.


There was the trade of Jordan Eberle for Ryan Strome, who a year later was flipped for Ryan Spooner, who was put on waivers this week.
And on Monday, Chiarelli’s last move was announced: a three-year, $13.5 million extension for Mikko Koskinen, a 30-year-old goaltender with 32 NHL games under his belt.


On Tuesday, Koskinen allowed two softies in a 3-2 loss to the last-place Red Wings. That was perhaps not the final straw, but it was symbolic of a GM tenure in which seemingly every transaction immediately came back to haunt the Oilers—and of the franchise repeatedly letting Chiarelli stick around long enough to keep causing damage.

 

And so, early Wednesday morning, the Oilers fired Chiarelli, after three-and-a-half seasons where “progress” has been measured by, uh, not getting the No. 1 pick yet again.

 

Discuss away .....  We bitch about what has happened to our proud Flyers...take a look at this trainwreck of an organization.  From their proud history in the 80's with Gretzky and Messier to now......  it seems like not even McDavid can save this oraganization......

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@JR Ewing

 

Just listened to Bob Nicholson's live presser about the firing of Chiarelli, ugh. Two things stood out to me.

 

 First he said, 'there is something wrong in the water" talking about the way the team is built. Okay, kind of a weird analogy but admission the team doesn't play a cohesive game, appreciate his honesty. He added that they are a playoff contender this year and he is willing to add to the team but not at the cost of assets that he considers essential moving forward so with that as the attitude trades will be difficult.

 

 Second.  The big one that grabbed me, a reporter asked him if they were going to try to continue to go big and slow as they have under Chiarelli or if they are going to go for speed the way that most everyone else has and he answered, "I am not worried so much about speed or size, the first thing I want to look at is character in the drsssing room." All I can say to that is what?? Dont get me wrong, character is important but to say that you will examine character before skill seemed very unusual to me. It was almost as if it were a subtle message to the players in the locker room, maybe there is a clubhouse cancer or two still on the team? I know that Ference without calling Hall out by name stated that the Oiler locker room was a mess while he was there, if they have a cancer and if Nicholson's presser was a subtle way of telling said cancer that eh knew who it was and they needed to get it together who could he be referring to? I wouldn't even want to speculate, you know your boys more than I do. With the Wings, Athanasiou is a bit of a cancer, short with reporters he and Blashill dont get along according to reports, Mantha is known as a great teammate but hates the coach, I know a lot of that goes on behind the scenes but I dont know who it would be in Edmonton.

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@yave1964

 

I watched the presser and was unsurprised and saddened by it. There is a chronic unwillingness for management to accept responsibility.

 

Over the last 10 years, they have cleared out about 1,396 players who were blamed for being the problem with the team. My personal feeling is that the character issues are in the offices at Kingsway Ave, and not in the locker room so much. Since Daryl Katz bought the team 11 years ago, EVERYBODY but Lowe, MacTavish, etc, has been moved out, yet the same tragic-comic remain.

 

Let people infer from that whatever they may.

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3 hours ago, Hockey-78 said:

Good riddance! Yeah, some bizarre moves and this latest extension almost made me start a thread about it:

 

$13.5 mil. extension for rookie Koskinen after only 32 games! :hithead:

 

This has to be his last GM gig...

That one I can kind of defend, Koskinen was a Islander prospect close to a decade ago when they had zero idea what they had with anyone, he went back to Mother Russia and simply killed it, playing at first for one of the mediocre teams before going to St Petersburg Ska which is the gold standard of the KHL, going a combined 65-37 including four consecutive deep playoff runs including winning the cup twice before signing a one year deal with the Oilers this year. 

 

  Going into yesterdays game he and Talbot had played the same amount of minutes, Koskinen is sitting at 14-10-1 whereas Talbot is 9-13-2 with a half a goal per game less being scored with Koskinen in net. Talbot has a save percentage of .894 versus .910 for Koskinen in the same amount of ice time behind the same lousy defense.

 

  So yeah, it is a small sample size, a bit over a half a season but his record in the KHL is  stellar, I have LONG been skeptical of goalies who suddenly find themselves after 25, Tim Thomas was the exception to the rule but IMHO this is not what this is, Koskinen is, in my opinion a kid who slipped through the cracks because of a bad organization in the Islanders who when he finally got his NHL chance this year has proven himself to be a solid NHL goalie. Chiarelli got a lot wrong, more than most but I think he got this one right.

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What is the environment like in Edmonton right now? A quote that I came across:

 



"My small office has had 4 lower bowl seasons tickets since the early 1980s. This is our last year. The cost of the tickets has become so much, and the return on the investment so little, that it makes no sense for us anymore. Clients don’t want to go to games. Even my own kids, who have never seen a truly successful Oilers team in their lifetime, don’t want to go very often."

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  • 10 months later...
4 hours ago, Hockey-78 said:

So does it seem like the Oils were only shy of a good coach and #1 goalie? Things look so much different after only 12 months.

  They clearly have a plan which is different than the Chia regime. That and an influx of youth and energy and Draisatl actually finding a complete different level than about anyone in the game. I include Mcdavid in that comment.

 

  Koskinen has long been a favorite of mine, he was an Islander prospect back when they were still trying to justify the ridiculous DiPietro contract so in frustration he went to the KHL where for years he was arguably the best goalie not in the NHL. Coming to the NHL so late in his career has less to do with him than it has to do with being an Isle property when they had no clue. He is pushed a bit by Mike smith and the duo have fixed the net nicely.

 

  So yeah, a great coaching signing, fixing the net, youthful exuberance on the bottom six, Neal finding his game, Draisatl becoming the best player in the game this year. Lots to like.

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11 hours ago, Hockey-78 said:

So does it seem like the Oils were only shy of a good coach and #1 goalie? Things look so much different after only 12 months.

 

Both have been extremely helpful. Last year, Cam Talbot surrendered a GA on the first shot of the game 12 times. That's a dozen games where you're immediately trailing. His Quality Start % was .478 last season and he surrendered almost 10 more goals than expected. It's tough to win when you don't get saves.

 

The coaching has been a good change. The first thing that Tippett did was get rid of that horrific and historically bad PK setup:

 

U7UFxdY.jpg

 

If the puck was higher up, it became an L, as we see here, and if the puck was closer to the corner, then the D would take their spots closer to the posts. It was an EXTREMELY passive PK and was mercilessly picked apart with cross-seam passes which became grade-A scoring chances. About 2 seconds later, Nylander found Matthews over on the left side for an easy goal. The Oilers ran that for the 2018 and 2019 seasons and rode it to historically bad results. No other PK was ever as statistically bad as that.

 

This year, Tippett is running a tried-and-true aggressive box and the PK% is #2 in the NHL.

 

Last season, after McLellan was fired, the Oilers brought in Ken Hitchcock, and there was immediate turn-around in key areas. They spent a lot less time defending, forechecked a lot better, and were winning until, after one really bad game, Hitchcock (who IS a great quote) had a press conference where he excoriated the team and suggested that he cares more than they do, and from that point on, the team clearly quit on him. Structure largely disappeared, and they lost a bunch.

 

Big note: Leon Draisaitl transformed under Ken Hitchcock, and became a far better all-around hockey player. He went from flying the zone and scoring at an 82-point pace to a player that was much more responsible and scored at a 110-point pace, and it's only improved this year.

 

6 hours ago, yave1964 said:

  They clearly have a plan which is different than the Chia regime. That and an influx of youth and energy and Draisatl actually finding a complete different level than about anyone in the game. I include Mcdavid in that comment.

 

When McDavid was interviewed by TSN after being put at #1 on their list of the top 50 players in the NHL, he spent nearly the entire time talking about how he felt they had underrated Draisaitl, whom he felt should have been in the top 5. McDavid is starting to take over now, and is sitting at the top of the scoring race, but until the last couple of weeks, Draisaitl was the better player. McDavid looked rusty from a summer of rehabbing his knee rather than doing proper hockey drills, and it showed. He's looked more like himself with every game.

 

Quote

  Koskinen has long been a favorite of mine, he was an Islander prospect back when they were still trying to justify the ridiculous DiPietro contract so in frustration he went to the KHL where for years he was arguably the best goalie not in the NHL. Coming to the NHL so late in his career has less to do with him than it has to do with being an Isle property when they had no clue. He is pushed a bit by Mike smith and the duo have fixed the net nicely.

 

I can't complain about Koskinen this year, and last year he was really good until Hitch simply played him too often.

 

Quote

  So yeah, a great coaching signing, fixing the net, youthful exuberance on the bottom six, Neal finding his game, Draisatl becoming the best player in the game this year. Lots to like.

 

A huge difference in the team this year: regardless of how well Neal would play this year, deleting Milan Lucic from the lineup is a huge difference. He's a sub-replacement level player, and I can't begin to guess what Brad Treliving was thinking by bringing him on board. Neal has scored 14 goals in 29 games so far this year, and I feel extremely confident in saying that I don't think Lucic will score 14 more goals in the rest of his career. I was thrilled on the day of the trade, and remain so. By the way, why did Treliving think that bringing in the three worst Oilers would somehow make his team better?

 

The other major item: the emergence of Ethan Bear. He's been very good in the defensive zone: separates pucks from offensive players, and is a + passer out of his zone, which the Oilers didn't have on the roster. He's a Dave Tippett-type defenseman through-and-through. The loss of Adam Larsson presented him with the opportunity to play, and he's (as well as the team) have taken full advantage.

 

------------------------

 

To put this very basically, as of today, I think the gameplan is this:

 

a) Even-strength: for 22 minutes a night, they're the best in team in hockey.

b) Special teams: for about 4-6 minutes per night, they're rolling out the most potent PP in the league, and this year, they've had one of the top few PKs in the league in those 4-6 minutes.

c) It's those other 30ish minutes that make all the difference. If the rest of the team can at least tread water, they have a good chance to win the hockey game.

 

 

Edited by JR Ewing
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