Oil is down, Leaves blow into town...

.#Oilers #OilersNation #Leafs

With a barrel of oil down and gas prices at their lowest levels since the Oilers last hoisted the Stanley Cup (adjusted for inflation), the sagging and soggy Phaneuf-less Maples Leaves with Todd McLellan's old bench boss Mike Babcock leading them to the Auston Matthews Sweepstakes, McDavid and Co. are sure to strike oil tonight.

Old teammates Mark Arcobello (#FreeArco) is the Leaves' 2nd line centre and Martin Marincin is on the 3rd pair.  Surely he's still better than Schultz, right?

With 3 losses in a row, two of them just awful performances the Oilers Lineup Value Metric (LVM) has dropped to 87% of an ideal lineup, particularly the paltry defense.

Another note of course is Anders Nilsson got sent down and Laurent Brossoit was called up.

Still, the root problem isn't goaltending. It's scouting and development. The decades-long stint of bad scouting, particularly of defensemen, has led the Oilers to where they have been since 2007.  Let's stop blaming goalies and really look at how the opponents get to shoot from where they do.  Let's stop blaming forwards and look at how difficult it is for defensemen to carry or pass the puck up the ice.

Of the six defensemen playing, there are about two and a half NHLers in there (Sekera, Davidson, and a bit of Gryba).  Let's admit that if the Oilers had scouted decent defensemen in the past, that Darnell Nurse wouldn't be playing in the NHL until next year.  But no.  He's here because they didn't and now Nurse's game is suffering because of bad scouting and development.  And when inexperienced defense suffers, so too does the goalie, and so too do the forwards and the team as a whole.

I think Chiarelli should only scout and draft defensemen.  He isn't gonna find any UFAs.

FORWARDS
4 x ( Hall(4)    + Draisaitl(4) + Purcell(3)   ) = 44 - 48 = -4
3 x ( Pouliot(3) + McDavid(5)   + Eberle(3)    ) = 33 - 27 = +6
2 x ( Yakupov(2) + Letestu(1)   + Pakarinen(2) ) = 10 - 12 = -2
1 x ( Korpik.(1) + Hendricks(2) + Kassian(2)   ) =  5 -  3 = +2
                                           TOTAL   92 - 90 = +2

DEFENSE
4 x ( Sekera(3)  + Fayne(2) )  = 20 - 32 =  -12
3 x ( Davidson(3)+ Gryba(2) )  = 15 - 18 =   -3
2 x ( Nurse(1)   + Schultz(1)) =  4 -  8 =   -4
                          TOTAL  39 - 58 =  -19

GOALIE (NEW)
5 x Talbot(4) = 20 - 25 = -5

Current: 92 + 39 + 20 = 151
  Ideal: 90 + 58 + 25 = 173

151/173 =  87%