Oscargasm wrote on Sat, 29 May 2021 19:04

RDOilerfan wrote on Wed, 26 May 2021 16:51 Adam wrote on Wed, 26 May 2021 16:50 Goose wrote on Wed, 26 May 2021 15:49 This did not inspire a lot of confidence. The 10min from about 36:30 on where Rishaug asks him if he needs to be more aggressive in potentially moving some futures to help the team now is just rambling nonsense. Talking about there are no guarantees, and that it's hard to win the Cup. Did anyone here know that you go from the regular season to 16 teams in the playoffs, to 8, to 4, to 2, to 1? It's hard. Also, he did it once in Detroit when he traded for Chris Chelios and it didn't work out so He also mentioned, a couple of times, that you can't just bring in one player and then expect to win the Cup. I don't think anybody that follows the Oilers thinks that's realistic or is suggesting that he can do that. Good news though is that he's been at this for 24 years and knows a thing or two about winning...sorry, wrong press conference. He's been at this for 24 years and been to the Finals 6 times and won 4 Cups, so he's lived all that. Zero urgency from Ken Holland. Given multiple opportunities to talk about this team being a contender and what he needs to do - he fidgeted and rambled and said nothing. His "I won four Cups" is pretty hollow comfort considering that the last one was 2008 and the rest are pre-salary cap days. When he's talking about comparing this to the 1993 Red Wings, I fear that he thinks we're four years away. That's awful, just awful. He said specifically "I'm not going to say we're going to win the Stanley Cup". What the hell is the point if you can't say that? He talks about a 6-month, 1 year, 3 year, 7 year plan...and gives no evidence there actually is one. He wants to make the playoffs every year. That's a low bar, Ken, given what we have here. Did he mention he's done it before? Were you expecting him to name names of who he's going to trade for and sign other than talk about a few of his teams free agents? I think the expectation, especially given the comments in and around this season’s deadline, is that they (Holland and co) realize that while they can’t go for it every year, this coming summer and season are when the Oilers window officially opens and we can really go for it.

I missed RDOF's first comment here, but I've seen a couple others.

No one, and I mean NO ONE, is asking for a MacT style press conference where he opens the playbook and shows everyone all their plans.

What I would expect a good GM to do is to acknowledge their disappointment, punt on virtually everything related to what you're doing this summer - "we haven't had a chance to meet as a management team yet, we'll see what the summer brings, etc." I wouldn't have said that they were planning on signing Mike Smith. Faced with Rishaug's question, I'd say that we think we did go for it this year. We identified a hole on defence and brought in Kulikov and that we felt around the trade deadline that McLeod was ready to make the jump to the NHL - so we brought two pieces in for virtually nothing. I acknowledge that maybe it wasn't enough - taking a small amount of the blame for the failure on myself and away from the players - and say that the margin of error was so small, maybe another player would have made a big difference but we work with the information we have at the time. We see this as a very important year ahead, we absolutely are "going for it" and that we'll make the right deals to help the team both in the summer and in season. We won't force it if those deals aren't there - where teams make mistakes is when they overpay because they think they NEED to make a trade. We saw that here with the prior GM, actually.

I definitely wouldn't start rambling about what I did two and a half decades ago in Detroit as if that's got any relevance. I wouldn't have said we hope to be a team like Winnipeg some day. I definitely wouldn't have rambled on about how people have criticized me for signing bad contracts...especially since no one said anything about them.

Asked about the goals for this team, I would be clear that the team has to be a contender every year, and if player personnel is an issue that holds back the team, then it is on me. My goals for the meeting are to put a little bit of pressure on the players - send the message to players and fans that our time to win is now - but also point out that I have a lot of responsibility to what happens from here, letting the players know that I'm in it with them, and that I'm not going to bury them if the team is substandard and doesn't compete because of that.

I don't think that's too hard. Leaves a much better message for everyone than stammering about how I once traded for Chelios and it didn't work, but then years later we won, and we still had Chelios so you know...I don't even know what the point of that story was.

"Thinking that a bad team's best players are the reason the team is bad is the "Tambellini re-signing Lennart Petrell" of sports opinions." @Woodguy55
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