The Montreal Canadiens dominated the hockey world through much of the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s winning sixteen of their twenty-four Stanley Cups in that time frame. That long dynasty would give way to the New York Islanders of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. The Isles franchise having won four Stanley Cups total, all coming in a span of four years from 1979-1983.
Both of those teams would give way to the next dynasty, The Edmonton Oilers of the 1980’s. Winning five Stanley Cups from 1983-1990, Having star players such as Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri, and Grant Fuhr to name a few.
Since those days the Oilers have fallen on some tough times, making the playoffs nine times in twenty-four seasons and a total of zero playoff appearances since they went to the Stanley Cup Final back in 2006. The last time the Oilers recorded over ninety points in a season was that Finals year in 2005-06, and even more shocking, the last time Edmonton won their own division was in 1987. A bit of a moot point since the Oilers have won three Stanley Cups since then but a team with so much history and prestige I thought that was worth mentioning.
You can blame whoever and whatever you want for the Oilers lack of success over the last ten years. This team has had three first overall selections in the NHL draft all coming in consecutive years from 2010-12 and they still haven’t been able to come close to competing. Bottom line, management has been pretty awful.
Leading to a change in almost everything this off-season, getting new General Manager Peter Chiarelli from Boston where he won a Stanley Cup in 2011, new head coach Todd McLellan coming of seven successful years in San Jose and getting another first overall pick in the draft. That first overall pick wasn’t just an average first overall pick however.
Connor McDavid, “the next one”, the one people are comparing to Sidney Crosby and some say even has a chance to be better is a part of the Edmonton Oilers. It’s not everyday that a team gets handed a generational player and every team would be lucky to have a player like this. But this Oilers team isn’t just any team. How often do you see great players go number one overall and struggle on bad teams because they have no help? This shouldn’t be the situation in Edmonton. McDavid will have plenty of help offensively with Hall, Nugent-Hopkins, Yakupov, Eberle and others should be able to get their points with that amount of young talent.
The only questions that remained after the bad seasons were can the Oilers keep the puck out of their own net? We’ve seen it before with plenty of other teams, offense is a great thing to have, but if you can’t play defense or get solid goaltending you will not get far at all.
The defense for me is still a question. The signing of high profile free agent Andrej Sekera definitely helped their back end but how much can he really do? Other than that the Oilers are going into the next season with almost the same defensive team and the other changes that could be made is putting more young guys back there. For a team wanted to take the next step having a young defense could hurt, but at this point how much worse could it be. The Oilers have to chose between Sekera, Nikitin, Schultz, Fayne, Ference, Gryba, Klefbom, Aulie, Nurse, and Reinhart. There are better defenses in the league than that but if the young guys come and in play well they could help lead the team back to success.
Then the last line of defense, the goalies had to be improved as well. Ben Scrivens at times seemed like he could be the number one guy and for the most part could still be if he had a good defense in front of him. But all signs point to the Oilers going into next season with Cam Talbot who was acquired from the New York Rangers for draft picks. Talbot who spent the last two years as the backup to Henrik Lundqvist seemed to be the goaltender everyone wanted and most claimed to be the one who was ready to be a full time starter. Again for the Oilers, it’s an unproven. How many goalies have looked ready when they’re the backup yet fail when they get the chance to be full time starters? To many for me to count. At the end of the day though, the goaltending situation looks better now than it has for a while in Edmonton.
It’s got to be hard not watching hockey right now though if your an Oilers fan. Something that hasn’t been said in a while. The chance to watch Connor McDavid with the other young stars of the team, the improved defense and goaltending positions and even something like a new arena opening in the 2016-17 season. This off-season has been a pretty big success for the Edmonton Oilers, but hold tight fans we still have a little more than two months before the season starts.
