Adam wrote on Fri, 18 June 2021 17:09

RDOilerfan wrote on Fri, 18 June 2021 14:29 Kr55 wrote on Fri, 18 June 2021 14:03 RDOilerfan wrote on Fri, 18 June 2021 13:49 Kr55 wrote on Fri, 18 June 2021 13:36 RDOilerfan wrote on Fri, 18 June 2021 13:30 Mike wrote on Fri, 18 June 2021 13:12 RDOilerfan wrote on Fri, 18 June 2021 15:46 There you go. It will be interesting to see what the people who enjoy complaining about the Oilers 365 days a year will do if they ever win the cup. I am sure they will find something. Would you believe me if I told you Adam used to be even more of a homer than you? I used to call him Pompoms. The team could do no wrong. And then they broke him. There is hope for you yet I am not a big fan of being called a homer or an apologist or whatever else I get called. I know you aren't trying to insult me, so please don't think I am upset. I am not. But this is a sports team. I love the Oilers. They are by far my favorite team of all the sports. I follow them the most out of any of the sports I like to watch. I want the Oilers to win just as badly as everyone in here. When they lose, I hate it. But it's a sports team. If the Oilers never win a game again, I won't be happy, I will be pissed off but it's not life or death for me. My family will survive if the Oilers lose a game. So I do not see the point or value in my life to be overly negative about them because all it would do is ruin my mood. If a person wants too, they can go find something negative about every single thing out there. Life is too short to be miserable about something all the time. So if people in here want to be negative and miserable about the Oilers all the time, have at it. But just because I choose not too be miserable about the Oilers 365 days a year doesn't mean I blindly accept what they do all the time. It's a sports team, it's not life or death. Is it negative and miserable though to point out super obvious destructive patterns of a team you want badly to win? I think it's also comedic at this point because of how ridiculous it keeps being. It's like a cousin that keeps screwing up making the same mistakes no matter how many times his family tells them how to clean their act up. You still care for them, but there's a point where you're just going "oh...there's ____ being themself again!" and it's funny, unless they are seriously hurting themselves of course. There are degrees of caring I suppose? There's the caring where you just so badly want to hope everything will work out you just ignore all the bad and make excuses for the failures on behalf of it. I guess that's fine, and maybe it's annoying when people point out that you're in a cycle of seeing failure and making excuses that the thing you're cheering for doesn't really deserve the benefit of. Then there's caring there you can't help but to recognize all the mistakes being made and it annoys you, especially because you have zero control over fixing the problem. You have to find various ways to cope with having to witness the same mistakes over and over again, maybe laughing the stupidity of it, or venting about it with others that see the same issues, etc... Doesn't really matter what I say does it. I say I don't like when they lose, I don't like when they screw up, I don't like all the moves they make but because I don't just repeat the same "oilers suck" message that many of you do, that apparently means I am an apologist who just makes excuses for them. Believe what you want. There is still lots of opportunity for conversation on this stuff. None of us are in the room. I couldn't blame you for accusing some people like me for being pessimistic by default on many things this org does, in this case hiring practices. I personally think it's reasonable to argue that this org hasn't been that interested in hiring the best possible people to fix areas of obvious weakness based on years of poor results. Every new OBC friend that drops in ends up with another family member in departments that have completely let this org down for over a decade. We only can take notice of the ones with same last names too, who knows how many jobs are gifted to friends we've never heard of. In the end, our scouting sucks, and the org's employee chart keeps giving some low hanging fruit for guessing why. I totally agree with you 100%. This team for a long time has made lots of mistakes and they still make some mistakes. I personally think they are better than they were but are they where I think they need to be as an organization? No I don't. I think there is still more improvement need. But just because I don't feel the need to start ever conversation on every topic with Oilers suck or drag up whatever bad draft pick or trade or signing every time I post, doesn't mean I am an apologist making excuses for them or accept or are happy no matter what with everything they do. Part of the reason I am vocal is because I think there is evidence that the team does respond to fan pressure. They do everything in their power to control and contain it, and we've seen them bend to it before. It's why they're so happy to throw guys like Chiarelli and Eakins under the bus after they're gone - it's all about trying to let steam off and focus people's anger elsewhere. To me, that suggests that A) strong negative reactions from the fanbase to poor decision-making may eventually encourage them not to make that kind of decision again. And B) that passive blind acceptance of their flaws without questioning them - the attitude leading to statements like "maybe those really ARE the best guys from the job who all happen to be relatives or buddies of the guys in the power chairs" or "you're not a NHL GM, so you can't possibly understand how hard his job is", etc. etc. etc. actually actively hurts the team. I think it's a mistake to believe that your passion is greater than anyone else's who spends their time coming to a forum dedicated to the Oilers - especially after the last couple decades, as I think there's significantly less die-hards now than there's been historically. There were a lot of people shaken loose in the late 80s and early 90s by the sell-off of all the dynasty players, but I think the team's attitude and acceptance of mediocrity in the last decade and a half is much worse and has cost the team more fans. People could at least understand in the 1990s that some of our issues were economic. Now, we have a relatively level playing field and with an owner willing to spend to the cap most years (other than, oddly, 2017-18), we have a leg up on a third of the league right from day one. There's no one who has a massive advantage over us economically now, and yet the team is bad because management has been really poor over a really long time. You can see why that is frustrating for long-suffering Oilers fans who want to see a winner. It was frustrating when the team didn't have the money to compete. It was frustrating when it felt like we lacked the highest end players to compete - many called for a tank in order to get that kind of player with the thoughts that could give us the cornerstones to rebuild around. Now, we have the cornerstones and the money and the team is still not competitive and rather than being laser-focused on how to become a contender, they spend much effort still trying to set expectations that we're still years away from a contender and we should think this is okay because, hey, it took Ovechkin and the Capitals 12 years to win a Cup (never mind that they were considered a contender for much of that time). I think a little outrage is pretty understandable, and that some outside pressure on the team to deliver a contender is badly needed. They should have a massive urgency - we came a whisker away from a career ending injury to McDavid already. That should show the team they can't waste seasons on "development years" and should mean that any time they turn to media allies to promote a story that the team isn't ready yet, it should be seen as a massive management failure. I get it that some people prefer to just watch the team's moves uncritically and instead to just focus on complaining about player greed or about guys that they think have failed in their personal development. I think scapegoating departed players or coaches just enables the failing management though, and man, that group needs to be ridiculously good the next couple years if we're going to be where we should with the resources we have available to us. I don't think hiring a bunch of brothers or kids of execs and former hockey players who've never done anything besides play hockey is likely to be the most successful route though.

Man I wish the general fan pressure had more effect. They let Chia just sewer things until the entire league was laughing at us before firing him. Then they add Holland and just augment the org with more friends/family of his.

I think they still take the easy way out with the big firing to try to convince the season ticket holders that the needed change is coming, but much of the stuff out of sight has been pretty similar the whole way through.

"We need to get better immediately. That starts today"
- Lowe, 2013

"Next year I would forecast as another developmental year"
- MacT, 2015

5 x $5,000,000