Thinking more about the trade made by the Oilers yesterday, I think it’s important for the team to add AHL aged prospects into their system. The sad fact is that the cupboards are bare for the Oilers. Despite rebuilding for the better part of a decade, the prospect pool is very weak. The team pushed players to the NHL as fast as they could then consistently traded them away for worse returns. Combine that with poor drafting after the 1st round and you get the Oilers.

What we’re left with now is an NHL team with several high end players and nothing in the AHL system. The failure of the Oiler developmental system has been a point of focus a few times this season here and at other publications. It’s really a chicken and egg problem for the franchise. Is the AHL team not producing contributing talent to the team because of coaching/organizational issues or is it because the AHL team isn’t being given much to work with via prospects.

Do we blame the drafting or the developing? Well, it can be both! There’s no question in my mind that the drafting has been the primary problem. To find AHL aged players who could still be called prospects (20-23) we need to go back to the 2012-2015 drafts. Anything older than that and we probably aren’t talking about real prospects (sorry Dillon Simpson) and anything younger means not quite AHL eligible.

Between 2012 and 2015 the Oil drafted 29 players

1st Rounders – Yakupov, Nurse, Draisaitl, McDavid
2nd Rounders – Moroz, Roy
3rd Rounders – Khaira, Zharkov, Yakimov, Slepyshev
4th Rounders – Gustafsson, Houck, Platzer, Muir, Lagesson, Nagelvoort, Jones
5th Rounders – Laleggia, Campbell, Coughlin, Bear
6th Rounders – McCarron, Betker, Vesel, Marino
7th Rounders – Chase, Bouchard, Svoboda, Paigin

So what do we have here? When I look at this, the first thing that stands out is that there are only two 2nd round picks and both are painful misses. Mitch Moroz should never have been taken in the top 100 picks and Marco Roy had his career derailed by injuries. Both are ECHL players today, Roy an offensive player and Moroz just present.

The next thing that stands out to me is that the Oilers loaded up on 4th round picks. 7 picks that late in the draft is a lot of quantity but we know that by then the odds of hitting are quite low. Edmonton had only four 3rd rounders over the same time period and hit on half of them. Slepyshev and Khaira are NHL players today. Khaira might even be a good NHL 4th liner in the future. As far as the 4th rounders go, the best one is probably Erik Gustafsson (today) and he wasn’t signed by the Oilers.

So 19 of Edmonton’s 29 drafted players in this stretch come from low percentage picks in the 4th round or later. 4 of the 10 remaining picks were no-brainer 1st rounders who were expected to play in the NHL at a very early age. And this is how you end up with a prospect gap in the middle of a rebuild.

As for the developmental program and what they’re doing towards making the drafted players better, I think we can fairly question what happened with Russian imports like Paigin and Yakimov. However, we also have to credit them with helping Slepyshev and Khaira turn into NHL quality pros. To be honest, you can see why the Condors had to employ so many older AHL vets this season.

It’s also why trading for players like Cooper Marody and signing college free agents is important for Edmonton right now. The team needs to have real prospects developing on their farm team. It’s unfortunate that they don’t have many home grown players, but getting a solid group of young players together and putting the emphasis on development is important.

LINEUP

Kassian and Sekera are both listed as day to day.

RNH McDavid Rattie
Caggiula Draisaitl Aberg
Lucic Strome Puljujarvi
Slepyshev Khaira Cammalleri (?)

Nurse Larsson
Auvitu Benning
Russell Bear

Talbot

OILERS KEYS TO THE GAME

1) So…Do That Again. Edmonton’s offense exploded for 7 goals against Carolina. Not just that, the team got contributions from all kinds of players who had been struggling. The secondary scoring was happening all at once in a way that probably had McLellan and Chiarelli wondering where it had been all along. Strome, Lucic, Aberg, Caggiula, and Puljujarvi all had multi-point nights. How hard could it be to just do that all over again? I mean, really…

2) Rudderless. The Ottawa Senators were just blown out by the Panthers and will find themselves playing again without their Captain. Erik Karlsson is rightly at home grieving with his family. The Sens without Karlsson are infinitely worse and this is a group that is still living in the wake of their GM essentially admitting he wants to move on from almost all the high-end talent. This is a club that may simply not be emotionally invested in the game right now. And who can blame them?

3) Ceci. The Senators have a huge blindspot for Cody Ceci, who proves to be one of the worst possession players in the NHL. Ceci plays an average of almost 23 minutes a night for the Sens despite being quite awful and without Karlsson he played more than 25 minutes against the Panthers. The Oilers are hoping for more of the same. Almost 30 minutes of playing against Ceci is a gift for the opposition. Ceci has a brutal 43.9% CF this season, which is the worst of the remaining Senators defense. Only Phaneuf was lower and that’s because they were partnered together. McDavid vs Ceci is the matchup Edmonton wants.

Puck drops at 5:30PM Mountain Time on Sportsnet West. Game On!

Follow me on Twitter @Archaeologuy

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