captain wrote:
i'm seeing a bunch of articles talking about the oilers for next year. questions like:
-will they return to the post-season?
-will the defense be better?
-will the penalty kill be improved?
-will talbot hold up?
all of them are missing the biggest question of all: who the hell is going to score goals in edmonton?
last year's scorers (who potted more than 10):
mcdavid - 41
dringus - 25
RNH - 24
strome - 13
caggiula - 13
puljujarvi - 12
khaira - 11
lucic - 10
in:
rieder - 12
out:
maroon - 17
that's nine 10+ goal scorers, including maroon. all playoff teams last year had at least ten 10+ goal scorers, and the ones with ten or eleven usually had top prospect or two who scored at more than a 10 goal / 82 game pace. compared to playoff teams, the oilers are missing at least one regular depth scorer and at least one young contributor who could reliably score 10+ if given the games.
but how are their goals overall? in terms of actual goals for, the result isn't that bad. edmonton's goals-for was 20th "best" in the league. teams like anaheim, LA, and columbus scored only about 3% more and made it in.
looking at goals against, edmonton placed 26th in the league. looking again at columbus, anaheim, and LA, they allowed up to 20% fewer goals than edmonton did. so even though they scored at similar rates to edmonton, they made the playoffs by allowing fewer goals.
now, you might be thinking: "isn't this more a question of the defense being better rather than who is going to score?" i don't think so.
if you simply look at who plays in those cities, columbus has jones and werenski. LA has doughty. anaheim has lindholm and fowler. those teams are built around a cornerstone d-man (or two) who can drive the play and reliably come out ahead against elite players. as much as i like klefbom, edmonton just doesn't have that. this is not news.
in the absence of an elite d-man, the oilers were built as a team that would have to outscore the opponent. we all heard the rhetoric about the "high flying" oilers. however, every year since taking over, chiarelli has traded away more goals than he has gotten back. sometimes the losses are catastrophic (hall for larsson), sometimes more moderate (eberle for strome), and sometimes marginal (losing maroon, signing rieder). but the point is that chiarelli has slowly and systematically chipped away and the only advantage edmonton has.
unless both puljujarvi and yamamoto emerge as legitimate weapons this year, the oilers will miss the playoffs again. simply put, they won't be able to outscore the opposition.
i posted this back in august. chiarelli has since moved edmonton's 4th and 5th best goal scorers from last season for spooner and manning.
these are the same trades as hall for larsson, albeit at a much different scale: trading away players who can score goals for players who can't score (or even prevent) goals. chiarelli's solution is to promote yamomoto and puljajarvi, but neither of these players have shown an ability to make a difference on the scoresheet at the NHL level and should be developing in the AHL.
best of all, the acquisitions of manning and petrovic will force jones and gravel, arguably the oilers best pairing at this moment, out of the lineup.the oilers are 18-17-3 with 44 games left to play. i'm going to predict a finish of 14-25-5, which should have them finishing around 30th place.
update: in a surprising plot twist, petrovic is out with a concussion and manning is in the press box as a healthy scratch, which means jones and gravel continue to get playing time.
to put it another way, chiarelli traded caggiula for a healthy scratch who will only be pushed further down the lineup when klefbom returns
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