Edmonton Oilers: 3 moves that doomed Peter Chiarelli

Peter Chiarelli’s disaster-filled tenure as the Edmonton Oilers general manager is officially over. Here’s a look at the moves that sealed his fate and defined his tenure.

Everyone knew the 2018-19 NHL season would be a crucial one for the Edmonton Oilers. Another season without the playoffs would inevitably cause change, right? Well, the Oilers decided to get the change started early. After head coach Todd McLellan got fired in November, they are parting ways with the head clown of the circus, general manager Peter Chiarelli.

Keith Gretzky will take over most of Chiarelli’s roles for the rest of the season. The Oilers will need to find a full-time general manager since it’s clear Gretzky’s only an interim guy. They probably need to do a full cleaning of their incompetent front office. That Chiarelli was able to last so long is a testament to how poorly guys like Bob Nicholson have performed.

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Edmonton’s not going to see much change unless the guys who enabled Chiarelli’s shenanigans are shown the door as well. But at the same time, the Oilers are arguably not much better off now than when he took over. Chiarelli’s tenure in Edmonton is a complete failure because of this. At least it’s over before he could damage their future further than he already has.

Chiarelli’s time with the Oilers can be summed it in three moves. These moves doomed Edmonton and will continue to haunt them for years to come. Let’s take a look at the three worst moves Chiarelli made.

Honorable mentions: Trading for Alec Petrovic and Brandon Manning, for some odd reason. Who knows why Chiarelli was that desperate? At least Petrovic is a free agent after this season. Manning, on the other hand, has another year left. Ouch.

It’s hard to find just one dumb thing he’s done with Jesse Puljujarvi, so let’s lump all of that into one thing. Chiarelli and the Oilers expected him to develop in the NHL. The NHL is not a developmental league. Why they thought it was a good idea to try to force Puljujarvi to develop while playing a fourth line role is beyond me.

I was tempted to include the Griffin Reinhart trade. It was still an awful move. Just not bad enough, which should tell you enough about how bad the moves on the list are.

3. Trading Taylor Hall

As a 32-year-old, my generation’s “where were you when [insert thing] happened?” moment was September 11th, 2001. O.J. Simpson’s trial verdict also falls into this category. I vividly remember where I was when each event occurred. If Hockey Twitter has one of these moments, it’s this infamous Bob McKenzie tweet.

The Taylor Hall trade was a terrible one for the Edmonton Oilers. They effectively swapped a Ferrari for a Honda Odyssey at a time when they really needed the latter. The issue is the Oilers traded one of the best wings in the NHL and only got a fine defenseman in return. When you trade someone like Hall, your return needs to be greater than “fine”.

What’s baffling about this trade is people said “well, Hall never produced with Connor McDavid” as an excuse to justify the trade. Guess what? That’s a good thing! Hall didn’t need McDavid to put up impressive numbers. You need more than one line to win anything in today’s NHL. Chiarelli got handed two elite forwards who could drive their own line and gave one away for a guy who’s not even in the top 50 defensemen in the NHL.

The only reason this isn’t higher on the list is Chiarelli at least has a tangible asset on the NHL roster to show for it.

2. The Jordan Eberle Trade

The Jordan Eberle trade is easily the most baffling of Chiarelli’s trades with the Oilers. Nothing about it made sense then, and it somehow makes even less sense today. The Oilers claim it was to clear salary cap space, but in reality, it wasn’t. Unless Edmonton honestly traded Eberle so they could re-sign Kris Russell, which they could have done without trading Eberle anyway.

In exchange for a consistent 20 goal scorer, the Oilers got Ryan Strome. The former first-round pick of the New York Islanders desperately needed a change in scenery. But you don’t trade someone like Eberle straight up for a guy whose value is sinking.

But that’s not the worst part of the deal. Oh no, it’s not. The worst part of the deal is right now, all the Oilers have to show for trading one of their better wings is Ryan Spooner, who just cleared waivers. Every team had a chance to get him and his contract for free and made the decision to not claim him.

It takes a special kind of person to get taken advantage of by Garth Snow on two separate occasions. Chiarelli’s going to carry that distinction around for the rest of his life.