Edmonton Oilers: Just Wait ‘Til Next Year
The season is barely a day old and you can already use the slogan for the Edmonton Oilers: wait ’til next year!
It’s become a redundant feeling for Oiler fans: slow progress and not enough wins. Since making it to game seven of the 2005/06 finals, the Oilers are the only team in hockey to not make a trip to the playoffs. Even worse the team hasn’t finished above .500 since the 2008/09 season, with bottom-five finishes becoming the norm in what has become a fall from grace from its dynasty days of the 1980’s.
To general manager Craig MacTavish‘s credit he acknowledged the team needs to improve quickly so he didn’t stand pat this summer. Recognizing holes all over the roster (the Oilers finished tied for 24th in goals scored last season and dead last in goals against), MacTavish first went out and traded for defenseman Nikita Nikitin before re-signing him to a two-year contract. MacTavish followed that up by sending disappointing forward Sam Gagner to Arizona in deal that netted the Edmonton Oilers Teddy Purcell. Realizing this wasn’t enough, MacTavish dove head-first into free agency on July 1st and signed forward Benoit Pouliot and defenseman Mark Fayne to long-term deals. While the contracts left many fans scratching their heads (five years, $20 million for Pouliot, four years, $14.5 million for Fayne), one must recognize that Edmonton isn’t free-agency destination heaven for most players and have to overpay in order to land any impact players.
While these additions will help, there is still significant work to be done in Edmonton before it finds itself back into playoff hockey again.
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The quickest way back to respectability for the Edmonton Oilers is through cutting down the amount of goals against. As mentioned earlier, the Oilers finished dead last in the league in 2013/14 in goals against, allowing a whopping 267 goals. Even more disturbing is that 194 of these were allowed at even strength, worst in the league. If you take a look around the league last year, every playoff team finished among the top 20 in goals against. The Flyers, coming in at 20th, allowed 227 goals, or just about a half a goal better per game than Edmonton.
So how do they get there? Well, it will start in net with Ben Scrivens and Viktor Fasth. The Oilers traded for both goalies last season and both played relatively well behind a weak defense. While their goals against averages were not spectacular, both posted strong save percentages with Edmonton (.916 for Scrivens, .914 for Fasth) and give the team a solid duo to backstop the team. If it weren’t for a defense that allowed nearly 33 shots per game (fifth most), the Oilers may have very well stole a few more wins down the stretch.
Will the defense be better though? On paper it appears to be a more well-rounded unit with the additions of Fayne and Nikitin (when healthy). However the key to the unit may very well be rookie Darnell Nurse who earned himself a spot on the roster to open the season with a strong training camp. The 19-year old was drafted in the 2013 first round and is expected to at least get a nine-game look before the organization must decide to keep him up and burn the first year of his entry-level contract or return him to Juniors for the season. If Nurse can stick, the Oilers’ will have a fairly talented blue-line along with Fayne, Nikitin, captain Andrew Ference and youngsters Justin Schultz and Oscar Klefbom also patrolling their zone. It probably isn’t playoff worthy yet, but it’ll be much more solid than previous years and should help shave the goals against to a more respectable number.
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Oil On Whyte
Of course the other issue plaguing the Edmonton Oilers is their offense. It’s hard to believe that a team which had three straight top picks overall (Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Nail Yakupov) could struggle so mightily scoring goals, but here we are. The Oilers only scored 199 times last season despite Hall hitting the 80 point plateau for the first time in his career. The Oilers also received solid contributions from Jordan Eberle, David Perron, and Nugent-Hopkins, but the biggest key to the offense relies on the mercurial Yakupov. While posting a solid rookie campaign (31 points in 48 games), Yakupov fell off a cliff his sophomore season and tallied only 24 points in 65 games (and an ungodly minus 33 rating). Whatever troubles he faced last year, the Oilers need Yakupov to have those behind him if they are going to be able to hang with teams offensively this season.
(Whether the Oilers should look to trade Yakupov is an interesting one and should be seriously considered. Would a team like the Rangers take a chance on him for free-agent-to-be Marc Staal? The Rangers would get a potential game-breaker in their top six while the Oilers would solidify the blue line and essentially give Staal a blank check to re-sign. But I digress…)
What makes Yakupov’s progress more vital is the Oilers’ inability to draft impact players, despite years of high picks. Since 2007 they have drafted only six players who have played more than 100 games with the Oilers. In a league that stresses player development and cost-efficient players, the Oilers have simply not gotten enough value in their recent drafts and is one of the key reasons that they have been in a perpetual state of rebuild for what seems like an eternity.
Also working against Edmonton is simply the play of the Western Conference. If you looked at all the playoff teams last year, which is the most likely candidate to drop out of the top eight? Dallas finished in the eight spot with 91 points and all they did was add a top center in Jason Spezza. After finishing with only 67 points last season, is it realistic to believe that the Oilers can make up 24 points and leap-frog the other five non-playoff teams? Is there a chance? Sure. Is it likely? Not at all…
Despite that, things are looking up for Edmonton. Beyond Nurse, 2014 first rounder Leon Draisaitl also broke camp with the team and the Oilers hope he’ll be a key cog on the top-six shortly. Taylor Hall has quietly become one of the top offensive players in the league. The goaltending should be decent enough to keep the Oilers in most games and steal the occasional two points. Their top defensive prospects all have good size, a significant asset to have in the Western Conference. Coach Dallas Eakins was the hot item last summer before falling flat his first season behind the bench. If he can survive the calls for his head early on and the team shows progress, he could prove to be a solid head coach in this league.
There are pieces here and the foundations of a quality team starting to come together. With a step up from some of the kids and all-star play from its top forwards, the Oilers are a team on the rise and while I don’t think they’ll improve enough to qualify for the playoffs, it wouldn’t shock me to see them right around .500 and finally giving the Edmonton Oiler fans something to look forward to next season.