Well, there’s nowhere to go but up. The Edmonton Oilers organization’s first three games of the 2013-14 season couldn’t have gone much worse – the team’s “young stars” lost all three games, were outscored 17-6, and led for only 11 of the 180 minutes. If those three losses are any indication of things to come it’s going to be a long, cruel winter for the entire franchise. Thankfully they’re not, and the results of a rookie tournament have about as much real-life impact as rounds of bullets being pumped into a fictional character’s SUV. While you’re hoping to witness an awe-inspiring performance that will make you dook your pants, more often than not teams appear to dook their pants during a one-off tournament with limited practice time.
However, when a team, any team, takes the shellacking the Oilers have over their last three games you can’t help but ask a few questions about the health of the prospect system. It’s one thing to be embarrassed on the ice, but it’s quite another to shrug off or accept it without any pushback. I think the last three games can teach us quite a bit about the makeup of not only the organization, but those charged with the task of steering it in the right direction. With that in mind, let’s use the small sample size culled from a meaningless September exhibition to draw some premature conclusions.
*** We have a consensus on the Oilers’ goaltending: It stinks. I suppose the tournament gave an opportunity for undrafted kids like Philippe Cadorette and Franky Palazzese to showcase their abilities for an NHL club, but they failed to impress in either the 7-2 rout by Winnipeg on Saturday or Sunday’s 5-2 loss to Vancouver.
As for the lone Edmonton goaltender whose name you can bother remembering next week, Tyler Bunz showed the same poor positioning and rebound control that hampered him last season with the Stockton Thunder. He didn’t get much help from the defense, which hung him out to dry early and often, but it wasn’t a strong performance.
*** Oklahoma City Barons head coach Todd Nelson was behind the Oilers’ bench during the rookie tournament, and his postgame quotes from Saturday night’s 7-2 loss don’t inspire much confidence in this ability to assess his team’s performance. “All in all, I thought everybody were pretty decent…” Nelson said. “I thought we played a pretty strong game.”
Granted, the rookie tournament isn’t the time to snap sticks over your thigh or holler until the paint peels off the walls. It also isn’t the time to slap lipstick on the biggest pig in the rookie tournament. Of course expectations for the overall team performance is going to be low, because it’s more of an individual showcase/evaluation event than anything else, but don’t feed us modeling clay and tell us it’s pot roast.
*** At what point can you stop blaming poor play on a combination of rust or nerves? In the case of Oscar Klefbom and Darnell Nurse we’re still waiting. The defensive duo are 1A and 1B in Edmonton’s prospect pool, and expectations are high as can be for the pair of first-round draft picks. However, their performances have ranged from atrocious to mediocre during the tournament.
You have to temper expectations a bit, because neither player is NHL-ready at this point. However, they aren’t exactly facing the Red Army out there. When players like Klefbom and Nurse are facing their peers, it isn’t unreasonable to expect them to stand head and shoulders above at least their own teammates. Unfortunately for Oiler fans, neither player was able to differentiate themselves from the competition.
*** Next up is a showdown with the University of Alberta Golden Bears tomorrow night at 7 p.m. in Edmonton. Expect a spirited tilt, as the Golden Bears relish the opportunity to put on a show against the Oilers rookies, who will look to avoid a fourth consecutive loss. It will be interesting to see if the team goes back to Bunz between the pipes, or lets Ty Rimmer – the fourth goaltender on the roster – have a shot at impressing the Oilers brass.
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