Oilers continue uphill battle

 #Oilers #OilersNation . The fact that Darnell Nurse and Leon Draisaitl have been called up goes to show that the roster veterans are not adequate support.

 

For Nurse to be playing ahead of Nikitin, Ference, and Fayne points the back-end blame on the previous management completely unable to build a consistent and capable defensive core.

 

For Draisaitl, who has been playing brilliantly, certainly is far better than he was in last year's 37 game but few points debacle.

 

The stats show the Oilers are slightly better than last year in pretty much every category, but I have argued it is not enough to get them over the hump, and the standings show, it hasn't made any real difference.  Having Connor McDavid injured only exhasterbates that reality.

 

So in looking at the players that have improved from last year, we find (+7):

• 1LW - Taylor Hall
• 1C- Ryan Nugent-Hopkins
• 1RW/2C - Leon Draisaitl
• LD - Brandon Davidson
• LD - Oscar Klefbom
• LD - Darnell Nurse
• G - Laurent Brossoit 

 

Players who are the same (without McDavid):

• 2LW - Benoit Pouliot
• 2RW - Nail Yakupov

 

Players who are the same in general:

• 2RW/3RW - Jordan Eberle
• 3LW/RW - Teddy Purcell
• 3LW/4LW - Matt Hendricks
• 4RW - Rob Klinkhammer
• 4LW - Luke Gazdic

 

Players who have been worse (-8):

• 3C - Anton Lander
• 4C - Andrew Miller
• 4RW - Iiro Pakarinen
• RD - Mark Fayne
• RD - Justin Schultz
• LD - Andrew Ference
• LD - Nikita Nikitin
• G - Ben Scrivens

 

Now comparing replacement players:

• 2C - Connor McDavid has been a massive improvement over 2C - Derek Roy (+2)
• 3C/4C - Mark Letestu has been about the same as 4C - Boyd Gordon
• 3LW - Lauri Korpikoski has been about the same as anyone else on the 3rd line
• 3RW - Anton Slepyshev has not been an improvement over others previously
• RD - Eric Gryba has been a slight improvement over LD - Mark Fraser (+1)
• LD - Andrej Sekera has been about the same, if not worse than RD - Jeff Petry (-1)
• LD - Griffin Reinhart has been slight improvement over Nikita Nikitin, but not enough although he'll improve (+0.5)
• G - Cam Talbot has been about the same as Ben Scrivens, below average (-1)
• G - Anders Nilsson has been better than Viktor Fasth, and arguably better than Cam Talbot (+1)

 

Taking the accumulated net score, in comparing these players from last year to this we only get +0.5.

 

A good coach, like McLellan is, can only take a player so far in his development.  It falls on the player ultimately if he wants to improve.  And if the player isn't improving, then management needs to look at alternatives.  What I've seen is McLellan and Chiarelli got a quick first impression of many of these players and decided that it would be better to develop players in the NHL that had potential for improvement--particularly Draisaitl, Nurse, Klefbom, Reinhart, and arguably Yakupov, and call the other vets a wash, even if it means benching them (Ference, Fayne), or sending them down (Nikitin, Scrivens).  The difficulty is in giving them value for a trade, but it appears Chiarelli is going to burn down the old barn if need be.


The Oilers have been "in" more games so far comparatively to last year and aren't getting blown out as much.


At this point, to get over the hump we've been all dying for, here are the gaps (if team is healthy):

Forwards:

Hall - Nugent-Hopkins - Draisaitl/Eberle

Pouliot - McDavid - Eberle/Yakupov

Hendricks - ???/Draisaitl - Yakupov/Eberle/???

Klinkhammer - ??? - ???

Which means Lander, Korpikoski, Gazdic, Miller, Slepyshev, Pakarinen aren't taking this team to the next level.

Defense:

Sekera - ???

Klefbom - ???

Nurse - ???

Reinhart

Davidson

Which means there are too many left-shot defensemen, and right-shot guys like Fayne, Schultz, and Gryba have not been good enough, and obviously Ference and Nikitin need to be moved.  I still get the feeling Davidson will get the short end of the stick and be moved in a package, which is really too bad.  That said, McLellan doesn't seem to care much what hand a guy shoots with.  There is only 1 veteran on that entire d-squad I list above, meaning, it will take a few years until the youngsters get to playoff-level.

Goalies:

???

Nilsson 

Brossoit

Which means Talbot needs to take a backseat to Nilsson and they obviously need to let Scrivens go.

With that amount of work for management to do, I'm not hopeful that we'll get many bonafide NHLers pop out of other teams.  I wouldn't worry so much about the forwards at this time and focus on improving the defense, which is usually best done through landing a big name UFA or through development.  Seeing that there are no real right-shot defensemen being developed, drafting new and developing would always be smart to do, but the most prudent thing to do is to land a UFA.  

UFA right-shot d-men available in 2016 that come to mind are:

Erik Johnson

Dustin Byfuglien

How much do you miss Petry now, eh?