Tomorrow the Oilers will open up their season against the Calgary Flames with new and exciting expectations. For the first time in my adult life the Oilers are fully expected to make the playoffs. They have been expected to fight for the playoffs before, but now the bar has been raised. Now the Edmonton Oilers season will be considered a failure if they miss the post-season, for any reason.
The raised expectations are a natural development from the success the club experienced a year ago. There have been a couple changes to the group, but the core is more or less intact. Of course, the changes to the lineup have not been without controversy or gambles by management. The biggest question, which remains to be answered, is if the Oilers have actually improved or not.
The offseason changes start with Peter Chiarelli making another patented one-for-one trade in which he shipped out perennial 20-30 goal scorer Jordan Eberle for Ryan Strome. He also bought out Benoit Pouliot and brought in the recently bought out Jussi Jokinen. The blueline is basically the same except Sekera will be out for a few months and it seems like Yohann Auvitu will be the 7th man.
I would say that, to date, the offseason acquisition with the largest impact through camp has been draftee Kailer Yamamoto. Edmonton’s entry Draft was generally lauded by pundits from mainstream and new media sources alike. They went for skill off the hop and picked up one of the highest scoring kids in the draft at the 22nd spot. That move, so far, appears to have netted them a top 6 winger immediately and for cheap.
What wasn’t cheap were the contracts for Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid. The captain’s deal will not kick in until next season, but he will be the highest paid player in the NHL and the first to a 100-million-dollar deal. Leon Draisaitl’s deal is for this season and the Oilers made him the 11th highest paid player in the NHL. McDavid was a no-brainer. He’s the best player in the league and will be paid as such. Leon Draisaitl, however, is being paid higher than all of his comparable wingers. This is in part because the Oilers consider him a center. That would be fine if he was actually playing center. It looks like he will start the year on McDavid’s wing – where he picked up the majority of his points last year. At some point he will need to play the position the team is paying him to play.
On defense, Chiarelli did two things. One, he signed Kris Russell to a 4 year $4 million dollar per year deal despite what was an objectively awful campaign. Two, he refused to add anyone to the top 4 who could conceivably replace Sekera (who will be out rehabbing his knee until maybe Christmas). This ensured that the Oilers top 6 defenders were untouched from a year ago, except the number 7 guy was promoted. Zero improvements were made to the defense. It all has to come from internal growth out of Matt Benning and Darnell Nurse.
This is a pretty bold move for the Oilers considering it was on defense that they were outclassed during the playoffs. After Edmonton’s run, GM PC flatly stated that their defense wasn’t up to par with the Nashvilles and Anaheims of the West. Still…here we are. There’s a lot of pressure placed on young/inexperienced defenders to carry play through the first half of the season. I would like to believe that Benning and Nurse can handle that pressure, but it’s not really them that concern me the most.
In net, the Oilers are banking on Cam Talbot to lead them again, but all indications are they would like Laurent Brossoit to see more games. Or maybe I should phrase that as the team wanting Talbot to see fewer games. Semantics, really. What’s important is that the club was lucky to have Talbot start 73 games last season and it would be nice to see his load lightened. Cam Talbot was the team MVP after McDavid. They will need another great season from him in 2017-2018.
Edmonton is a good team, but there are obvious weak spots in the roster that make the team vulnerable. The 2nd pair is a complete question mark. I would classify both Benning and Russell as 3rd pairing guys, Russell on the low end and Benning on the high end. The right side of the forward lines is a mess of unestablished players who couldn’t seize the opportunities given to them in training camp.
However, they also have a lethal combination in McDavid and Draisaitl. They have enough depth down the middle to justify moving Draisaitl to the wing (temporarily). The team is also loaded down the left side with Maroon, Lucic, and Jokinen. That’s a group of players who have all played in the NHL for a while and performed at pretty high levels in the very recent past. Between the LW and C depth, there ought to be enough ability and experience to make up for deficiencies elsewhere.
The 2017-2018 season is about to start. I hope it will be at least as successful as last season’s. If we’re lucky then the internal growth that the Oilers are banking on will occur and the club will be set up to take even larger steps very soon. With the Flames actively trying to upgrade on defense and at the forward positions, it should be an interesting battle this season. Many people believe Edmonton will take the Pacific division. I'll defer to Ric Flair's words of wisdom and say that to be the man, you have to beat the man. Anaheim is their top rival and the Flames will be nipping at their heels.
Good luck, you Oilers.
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