2021 Edmonton Oilers season thread

[nafnikufesin]

This year is gonna be different, right?

At least, if nothing else, the misery will be shorter.

[Uncle Bobby]

Wow, crickets in here. I guess no one wants to get their hopes up too high or jinx it if things are going good.

Sarry. I'll quietly back away now.

[Esks4ever]

Its nice not see see endless whining over and over again.

[Hotrodzz]

Leafs and Oil. Should be a barn burner

[nafnikufesin]

We should make the playoffs, and 2nd in the North should be the expectation at this point, but the last two games show that this team isn't ready to go all the way.

[bone]

We should make the playoffs, and 2nd in the North should be the expectation at this point, but the last two games show that this team isn't ready to go all the way.

At this point, I think the best case scenario for the team is playoffs and hopefully win a series or two. They aren't ready to go the distance, but a reasonably successful year while burning off a little more of the excessive cap burden of past buyouts, Russell, etc, and development of the younger players should put us in much better position to go for it the next few years while still having Leon and Connor locked up. The fixed cap is a bit of an issue, but perhaps it allows a couple one or two year transition contracts like Barrie to get the younger players ready for primetime shortly after.

Say Barrie's inflated stats this year get him that big contract somewhere else he desires. That may become the biggest selling point we can offer to veterans that may not be getting the offers they want and they are willing to try a 1 or 2 season discounted contract to try and pump up their value for their next contract. So with this in mind, people probably need to stop wishing less success on Barrie. He's insulating Bouchard and Bear a bit this year and a successful season for him could help us getting those one year stop gap contracts going forward as well. For example, next year, we'll really need to find stop gap veteran top 6 left winger (or two if Nuge is gone) and third line centre to insulate for guys like Benson, McLeod, Holloway coming in the next couple years.

All that said, the goaltending situation definitely needs to be cleared up soon if they want to accelerate when they are ready. If you put a top 10 goalie behind this crew they could become really dangerous really quickly. We can hope Konovalov may be that guy a couple years from now, but with that, we'd again need that one or two year stop gap goalie option to get him ready, and at this point, we know Koskinen isn't the guy and Smith is too far into his career to rely on anything beyond this year.

The good news is the things the Oilers need most now, aren't nearly as tough to obtain as the things they needed a few years back and they do at least have some in house (ie. cheaper options) growing that could ultimately fill those holes.

[Uncle Bobby]

Time to lock this thread. Things went bad when comments started.