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Peter Chiarelli: 1 Year Later |
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It has been almost 1 year since the Oilers made the most significant move of the Rebuild, hiring Peter Chiarelli to the be the President and GM of the club. Bob Nicholson completed his audit of the team, an audit that I wasn’t convinced was anything more than lip-service to placate the fans, and he actually made real change.
Out was Patrick Laforge as President. Out was Kevin Lowe from Hockey Ops. Out was Craig MacTavish as General Manager. The change was both necessary and welcomed by many Oiler fans, but truly I didn’t think the team was capable of making that decision because it was so far away from everything they had done previously. I applauded the move then, I applaud it still now.
It’s been a long, tough year for the Oilers. Chiarelli’s first season at the helm has not been a parade of victories. It has had its fair share of failures to go along with the good.
THE COACH: WIN
The first real addition made by Peter Chiarelli was the hiring or head coach Todd McLellan. This is the first time in Oiler history that the team hires a name coach in the prime of his career. Sure, they hired Pat Quinn to kick this hellish rebuild off, but he was at the last stop of his long and storied career. Before that the coaching history of the Edmonton Oilers is very much a who’s who of former players and up and comers. A few in the glory years turned themselves into names, but few if any ever had one before being handed the reigns to the team.
Todd McLellan’s Oilers ultimately performed better than the Eakins/Nelson Oilers by the measure of Wins, Points, and Goal Differential. Edmonton finished the season in 29th place, one spot lower than they had previously, but that masks the fact that the team improved in very real ways. The Oilers won 31 games in 2015-2016 compared to just 24 the year before. One season ago the club only had 19 Regulation or Overtime wins. This season that number jumped to 27! They finished with 70 points this season, compared to just 62 the year before. As for Goal Differential, Edmonton shaved 43 goals off their balance, going from -85 to -42.
McLellan’s Oilers, despite being injured all the time and never once playing a complete lineup, finished with a better Corsi For percentage, Goals For percentage, and Fenwick For percentage. While the increases are modest at best in all of those categories, I am simply happy to report any improvement at all. Where I am disappointed most was on the Power Play. I was expecting better results and they weren’t there.
Most importantly, the hiring of Todd McLellan ends the coaching carousel. The season ended and for the first time in a very long time we aren’t wondering if the coach still has a job. The team has been through Quinn, Renney, Krueger, Eakins, Nelson, and now McLellan since 2009. The constant changeover is done with. The players don’t have to learn someone else’s system next year.
THE DRAFT SELECTIONS: WIN
Right before the Draft, Chiarelli fired a wide array of pro and amateur scouts. He released guys like Morey Gare, Dave Semenko, and Stu MacGregor who had been a part of the scouting department for a long time. Stu was the Head Amateur Scout and just 3 days away from drafting Connor McDavid. That’s a tough pill to swallow.
Any draft that allows you to walk home with Connor McDavid is a win. There’s no way around it. The Oilers would have to really screw things up in order to come away from that draft as losers. They took home a generational talent who walked onto the team and became its best player within a couple weeks. In almost every game he played he was the best skater on the ice, for both teams. Win.
We’ll cover the deals Chiarelli made next, but due to those transactions the Oilers didn’t select again until 117th. When they returned to the podium, so to speak, they took Caleb Jones, brother to Seth. The younger Jones entered the WHL this season, picking up 55 points in 72 games with Portland. He lead their defense in scoring and played both the left and right side with regularity.
They followed that up with Ethan Bear 124th overall. Bear picked up 65 points in 69 games with the Seattle Thunderbirds. He lead their defense in scoring this season. He has 9 points in 8 playoff games for the Thunderbirds as well. As a right hander he just might be the diamond in the rough the Oilers have been begging for all these years.
Finally, 209th they took 6’6” 209 lb defender Ziyat Paigin. The big Russian is older, 21 as of February, but he picked up 27 points in 37 KHL games. His offense and size is intriguing. The KHL isn’t known for playing kids big minutes or affording them many opportunities at all. So when a young man performs as he has then eyebrows are raised.
With upward arrows to three of the four defensemen they selected in 2015, the draft looks promising now, even though the club gave up significant assets in trades last June. If all that the Oilers ever see from their picks is Connor McDavid then so be it, but there’s reason to be excited about the accomplishments of the other draftees.
FIXING THE DEFENSE: LOSS
The window to begin fixing the Oiler defense opened at the Draft last summer. Chiarelli failed to make any headway to the defense at all. Perhaps he was fed bad information from the people still around him (MacTavish and Howson). Perhaps these decisions were his alone. No matter how you slice it, the Oilers did not fix their problem on the blueline.
With Nurse and Klefbom already a part of the organization, the youth and only strength of the defense was in their left handed shooters. Despite this and the obvious need for right handed rearguards, Peter Chiarelli used the 16th and 33rd picks in the draft to pick up Griffin Reinhart. This deal came off the heels of their failure to land Dougie Hamilton. Rumor has it that the Oilers offered better assets than the Flames to Boston, but out of spite the Bruins turned to Edmonton’s rivals.
So instead of picking up an NHL established, young, right shooting defenseman capable of providing offense, they got an AHL project, left-shot, shutdown defender instead. I’ve long maintained that I believe Reinhart will have a fine NHL career. I still believe that. But he is going to be hard pressed to jump past the 4 defenders ahead of him on the Oilers depth chart. In terms of the higher value, there’s no doubt in my mind that Mathew Barzal or Kyle Connor (taken 17th) would net a greater return today than Reinhart.
At the draft the Oilers also traded Marincin, a player who had famously fallen out of favor with MacT, away for a 4th round pick. They then traded that pick for Eric Gryba. The rough and tumble Gryba is more expensive and will now likely hit UFA status. The more effective Marincin earned big minutes with Babcock post-deadline and has been an excellent shutdown defender his entire career. It’s unlikely he’ll cost the Leafs much at all.
Chiarelli did acquire one significant player to play in the top 4. He signed Sekera, another left-shot, to a long term deal as a UFA. Sekera was forced to play above his head for most of the season, but he’s a dependable player who should be a calming presence on the 2nd pair for years and years. Unfortunately for Reinhart, Sekera presents a major hurdle that he is unlikely to jump.
Also among the failures to address the blueline, is the fact that Chiarelli allowed Justin Schultz to begin the year again as this team’s top right hander. He opted not to take Schultz to arbitration and found no alternative to playing him either. The results were disastrous for Schultz and the team. He continued to regress and there’s no telling what damage another year of playing above his station did to both him and the club.
ADDING SIZE: WIN
One of the things Chiarelli promised was size. Especially size up front for the Oilers, who had developed a reputation as having a small forward group. He didn’t add everything all at once, but over the course of the season the Oilers absolutely got bigger.
The previously mentioned Gryba and Reinhart are big men on the back-end. Gryba took a lot of heat early because the belief was that he was little more than a coke machine, but the reality is that he performed well by possession metrics relative to his linemates. He added a physical element to the defense that many believed was missing.
As for up front, Chiarelli took a chance on Zack Kassian, trading Montreal Ben Scrivens for a player coming back from dangerous personal failings. Kassian ultimately added less offense than I thought he could, but he will be an inexpensive option on the wing. He plays a mean-spirited game that the Oilers are not known for. As a bottom 6 player he certainly adds something different than those who might replace him.
I’ve softened on my initial reaction to the deal, but I’m still not completely over Gagner’s jaw.
The best deal that Chiarelli made all year was the trade to acquire Patrick Maroon. The hulking left-winger came to the Oiler in exchange for Martin Gernat (AHL defender) and a 4th round pick. In addition to acquiring him for almost nothing, the Ducks also retained 25% of Maroon’s already cheap salary.
What the Oilers ended up getting was a 6’3” 230 pound left wing for Connor McDavid that instantly gelled with the rookie sensation. He’s huge, plays a north-south game, gets in the face of the defense, and used soft hands to score at a ridiculous pace. Even if he cools significantly next year, the Oilers will walk away from that deal bigger and better.
Chiarelli promised bigger. He’s getting bigger.
THOUGHTS
The past year has been a step forward for the Oilers. Peter Chiarelli has done good things. The list above has more wins than losses. However, failing to meaningfully address the defense outweighs many of the positive gains that Chiarelli made. It’s why even though he did well by finding a coach, by finding size, by drafting a truly great talent, the Oilers were unable to take a great leap forward.
Should Peter Chiarelli begin the next season without meaningfully addressing the right side of this defense then it is unlikely that his 2nd year at the helm is looked upon with any positivity at all. Changes were made to the Oilers. Baby steps were taken with a foundation laid down, but Edmonton cannot afford more baby steps.
I believe there has been enough good moves by Chiarelli to forecast others this summer. I do have great concerns about what the Reinhart deal means about this team’s ability to assess defenders. That said, Chiarelli wasn’t afraid to give new deals to Klefbom and Davidson when they deserved them. His assessment of Schultz at the deadline seemed fair and accurate, compared to delusional from the previous men in charge.
With some luck, the Oilers can look forward to the change they need to finally leave the basement of the NHL and compete for the Stanley Cup.
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Edmonton Oilers Blogger • 
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