Even with Connor McDavid, the best player in the world, the Edmonton Oilers face a long road to getting to the postseason.
The Edmonton Oilers had a humiliating season in 2018-19. Despite getting a 50 goal season from Leon Draisaitl and getting the fifth-most productive season of the salary cap era from Connor McDavid, the Oilers still managed to finish 11 points out of the postseason. Even with the floor for the playoffs being fairly low at 90 points. You have to go back to the 2009-10 season to find a playoff team with less than 90 points.
Even with the best player in the world (McDavid) and a great forward (Draisaitl), the Oilers have very poor chances of making the postseason. They’re in a pretty weak Pacific Division and their postseason chances are still hovering around five percent.
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That’s an indictment to how ugly the rest of the roster is. A team with a generational talent shouldn’t be this bad.
Offseason Recap
Added: Josh Archibald, Markus Granlund, Tomas Jurco, James Neal, Joakim Nygard, Riley Sheahan, Mike Smith
Lost: Milan Lucic, Alex Petrovic, Jesse Puljujarvi, Ty Rattie, Andrej Sekera, Anthony Stolarz
The Oilers clearly needed to add some players to their roster this summer. So what did they do? Virtually nothing outside of hiring general manager Ken Holland and head coach Dave Tippett.
To be fair, there wasn’t much room for the Oilers to do much thanks to some awful mistakes made by former general manager Peter Chiarelli. But still, Edmonton has virtually the same roster that finished 11 points out of the postseason last season.
Granlund should be in the Oilers bottom six. He’s a decent forward, but nothing to write home about. Jurco and Archibald are decent depth guys. Neal had a bad season in 2018-19, but before last season, he was a reliable 20 goal scorer. Maybe a bounce-back season is in order for him.
Sheahan will likely be the Oilers third-line center. He’s an improvement over their internal options, but that says more about their internal options than Sheahan. Smith is an old goaltender, which is never good. But he did have a pretty solid second half for the Calgary Flames last season.