| Oilers extend Bouchard - $10.5 mil AAV x 4 yrs [message #847106] |
Mon, 30 June 2025 16:16  |
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 Gator21
Messages: 204
Registered: February 2016
Location: Kelowna, BC
No Cups
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Woulda have preffered 8 yrs at at that AAV, kinda the opposite of Frederic
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That was a discount for 4 years instead of 8. Meanwhile all 3 of Florida's free agents who all probably could have got 10 mill a year only saved their team 11mill a year on the cap. We get no hometown discounts.
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oilfan94
Messages: 488
Registered: June 2006
Location: USA
No Cups
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| scotiaoiler wrote on Mon, 30 June 2025 20:13 |
That was a discount for 4 years instead of 8. Meanwhile all 3 of Florida's free agents who all probably could have got 10 mill a year only saved their team 11mill a year on the cap. We get no hometown discounts.
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I think this is what is most discouraging to watch. You can tell the Panthers players know they can win again and they want to win again. The Oilers don't have that confidence. Bouchard's contract feels like he wants to make some money and then get out so he can win somewhere else if things aren't working out. I actually expect McDavid's deal to be similar.
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nullterm
Messages: 1185
Registered: July 2007
Location: Port Moody, BC
1 Cup
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Look at ownership and management track records and convince me they have the collective marbles to win a Cup. If I was McDavid (and others) thinking about my career and legacy, how long do you trust it to that band of monkeys. We knew goaltending wasn’t going to cut it last year, and they still rolled the dice with Skinner.
They’ve had ten years of McDavid to get their act together. Yeah we have two SCFs and that’s nothing to disregard. But that last step is the biggest one. And that needs some actual brains and hard work to close out. Not just luck with high draft picks because the team was bad.
Illegitimi non carborundum.
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Gator21
Messages: 204
Registered: February 2016
Location: Kelowna, BC
No Cups
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Oilers have two of the top ten paid defenders in the league between Bouch and Nurse both of which are both pretty suspect at ya know…actually defending. Screwed ourselves twice with bridge deals. And the cherry on top…lost Holloway and Broberg to spend money on Skinner and Arvidsson 
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Adam
Messages: 7496
Registered: August 2005
Location: Edmonton, AB
6 Cups
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| nullterm wrote on Mon, 30 June 2025 20:05 |
Look at ownership and management track records and convince me they have the collective marbles to win a Cup. If I was McDavid (and others) thinking about my career and legacy, how long do you trust it to that band of monkeys. We knew goaltending wasn’t going to cut it last year, and they still rolled the dice with Skinner.
They’ve had ten years of McDavid to get their act together. Yeah we have two SCFs and that’s nothing to disregard. But that last step is the biggest one. And that needs some actual brains and hard work to close out. Not just luck with high draft picks because the team was bad.
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I think sometimes management fools themselves in to thinking THEY have got us close. The reality is that they've continuously done a poor job of building a team around the stars. McDavid had 33 points in 22 games this year. He had points in 18 of those games, and the Oilers went 13-5 in those games. In the 4 that we lost, we went 1-3 and scored only 5 goals. The win was the 1-0 game against Vegas. We lost Game 2 vs LA 6-2, Game 3 against Florida 6-1 and Game 6 against Florida 5-1.
Last year we played 25 games and McDavid scored 42 points. He was blanked 3 times vs Vancouver - 4-3 and 3-2 losses in Games 3 & 5 and Game 7 win (3-2). Again in a Game 2 loss to Dallas (3-1) and then three more times vs. Florida - Game 1 & 7 losses (3-0, 2-1) and a 5-1 win in Game 6. That's 2-5 without him scoring and 13-5 when he hits the scoresheet.
So over the two years - we're 26-10 if he scores and 3-8 when he doesn't.
And then there's Leon:
2025:
Game 6 vs LA - 6-4 W
Game 3 vs VGK - 3-0 W
Game 3 vs FLA - 6-1 L
Game 6 vs FLA - 5-1 L
2024:
Game 2 vs DAL - 3-1 L
Game 3 vs DAL - 5-3 L
Game 1 vs FLA - 3-0 L
Game 2 vs FLA - 4-1 L
Game 3 vs FLA - 4-3 L
Game 5 vs FLA - 5-3 W
Game 7 vs FLA - 2-1 L
Again, 3-8 when he scores, 26-10 when he doesn't.
Overlay those two and there's only 6 times when at least one of them doesn't score. We're 1-5 in those games only 7 goals in the five losses. The team has rallied to win all of one game for those guys - game 5 against Florida last year when they scored five.
Florida's whole game plan is to eliminate those two from the equation. Incredibly, five of the six times they've both been blanked have come in the finals the last couple of years. Draisaitl's injury last year contributed there, but the Panthers have figured out that if those two don't score, the rest of the team has been a popgun offence at best.
That wasn't helped by the coach who refused to play Jeff Skinner very much or in any top line role, despite the fact he was the only one on the roster to have any scoring success away from 97 and 29. We've had a bad tendency to play for the draw whenever McDavid & Draisaitl aren't on the ice and while some of that might be coaching, I think another big issue is that the depth just hasn't been good enough.
I mean, how many games was the second line Kapanen and Podkolzin flanking Draisaitl? Those two combined for 37 points for the entire season. Henrique, Brown, Frederic, Janmark, Arvidsson - the third and fourth lines contributed very little over the course of the post-season. And the Oilers look like they're bringing most of it back. Frederic is signed until the end of time. Janmark and Henrique have another year on their contracts. Kapanen just got re-signed. But those are all the low end of the roster for the team. The mid-tier - Kane, Perry, Brown, Skinner, Arvidsson are all going. They weren't good enough either, but will we be able to replace them?
I mean, there is definitely reason to be concerned if you're McDavid or Bouchard and choosing how long you want to sign for.
It probably doesn't help that we didn't make an effort to re-sign Bouchard last summer and bridged him for the last deal. And with the cap expected to really jump in the next couple of years, his agent will have wanted him to bet on himself here too, knowing there'll be more money in 4 years time. But I could forgive the players if there's a little uncertainty about the organization's commitment to winning.
"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
#FireBobbyNicks
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