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Another wasted McDavid year in review


yave1964

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PRESEASON OUTLOOK The Oilers were hoping they had enough to make the playoffs with more or less the same roster as the season before when they missed badly. 

 

FINAL RECORD 35-38=9 79 points 7th place in their Division. Missed playoffs by 11 points.

 

HIGH POINT OF THE YEAR Todd McLellan was mercifully relieved of his duties November 20th with the Oilers sitting at 9-10-1, Ken Hitchcock took over and the team bought into his system, Koskinen was more or less installed full time in net benching Talbot, the Oilers started winning and on December 14th after beating the Flyers 4-1 they sat at their high point of the year at 18-12-3 and they looked to be a playoff team.

 

LOW POINT OF THE YEAR Then reality set in. They lost their next 5, being outscored 25-12 in the span, won a few and lost a few then completely fell of the cliff losing 11 of 12 from mid January to mid February essentially wrecking their season.

 

WHAT WENT RIGHT They traded Talbot who has clearly lost it. koskinen came back to North America after dominating the KHL for years and had a very fine year although he struggled late. McDavid had a fantastic 116 points, Draisatl had 105 including 50 goals. RNH was very solid bouncing between the top two lines and center and the wing. Alex Chiasson came out of nowhere to net 22 goals. Kassian was a rugged 4th liner who surprised with 15 goals. Defenseman Nurse was a monster, Klefbom when healthy was a fine contributor. They swpt both McLellan and Chiarelli giving hope for the future.

 

WHAT WENT WRONG  Pretty much everyone Chia had brought in a few years earlier bombed. Talbot sucked, Lucic continues to atrophy into an embarrassing paycheck stealer, Larsson has clearly slowed finishing among the worst in the league at minus 28, Sekera couldn't stay healthy and in 28 games managed zero goals. Rattie was awful, Tobias Rieder came aboard for secondary scoring and in 67 games didn't score a single goal. They kept bringing in veterans with nothing left in the tank, Garrison, Gagner, Zykov, Manning, Petrovic, Wideman, Strome, Spooner all came aboard, all failed badly to varying degrees. This team has one line and a couple of solid defenseman and a decent goalie, nobody else did anything. Kids who are supposed to be good such as Yamamoto and Puljarrvi were neither good nor interesting. 

 

FREE AGENTS Chiasson was the teams 4th scoring forward on a team in desperate need of two more good lines, he is an UFA as is decent backup goalie Stolarz, an effort will be made to resign both. Others such as Petrovic and Gravel will almost certainly not be retained.

 

OFFSEASON QUESTIONS The first one was anwered when Kenny Holland was signed as the new GM after being run out of Detroit. Holland has a solid rep but for the past decade has overpaid veterans and screwed up the cap in Detroit as they have become the oldest team in Hockey and maxing out the cap while missing the playoffs for 3 years running. The big question is who will coach, Dave Tippett is rumored to have been offered the job by Holland and would be a solid signing.Can  Holland find a way of trading Lucic? He would have to give assets to get someone to take his contract, perhaps Arizona who is always fighting to get to the floor would take him if Holland threw in a pick. Will Puljarvvi ever be a player or is he the next Yakopov? Can they find a way to trade Larsson and or Sekera?

 

  My opinion is the Oilers have the making of a damn fine defense in Benning, Bouchard, Jones, Nurse and Klefbom, they have two superstars in McJesus and Draisatl and a damn fine player in RNH but little else up front. I would not be surprised to see Nurse dangled to fill a top six forward slot as he has more trade value than Larsson and they need to aggressively build a better group of forward or the team is going nowhere. 

 

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  • 2 months later...
On 5/26/2019 at 7:20 PM, yave1964 said:

Can they find a way to trade Larsson and or Sekera?

 

Sekera is in Dallas now.

 

Too bad he didn't stick around and get a chance to wear this hideous new alternate jersey...

 

EBnyyziUcAAE1uU.jpg

 

Y.U.C.K!

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