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Speculation » Draisatl Extension

Re: Draisatl Extension [message #825596 is a reply to message #825595 ]	Thu, 28 September 2023 13:03

RDOilerfan
Messages: 3908
Registered: January 2016

3 Cups

Adam wrote on Thu, 28 September 2023 12:45

RDOilerfan wrote on Thu, 28 September 2023 11:26

We are just going to go round and round then on this topic.

Your opinion is that Vegas won based on nothing but "good management". My opinion is they made some good management decisions but even the best managed teams need some breaks which is what they got. So if Vegas and their "good management" because it's the same guys this year, if they don't win the cup again, what will be your excuse?

Boston won 65 games, had 135 pts, 22 better than any other team. Their coach won coach of the year. Their GM was nominated for GM of the year. So that to me says their management did a very good job. They got bounced first round by the 8th seed. So what happened?

As soon as game 1 happened, all of a sudden Boston's management and coaches went from being really good to crappy? If there was injuries, "good management" would have back ups in place to cover that so they just keep going. So explain to me happened.

Could it be.. that maybe even good managed teams need some breaks to go their way? That you need your stars to play well, that you need other guys at the right time to get hot. That you need some fortune with injuries. Lots of things have to go your way that don't involve "good management". And even a really good manage team can flat out lose to a red hot goalie. Is that possible or no?

You've got a few fallacies here.

The biggest is that no one has said that Vegas had no luck involved. Certainly, any hockey team is going to have a few good breaks. No one has denied that. The Bruins are a good example of that - good team, but hit a hot goalie who hadn't played at that level for ages, and it certainly didn't last. If Bobrovsky had played the way he did in the Finals, the Panthers probably don't get out of the first round.

There are things out of your control, and they can help a team win or lose. Good management puts a team in the best position to win, and to overcome bad luck and capitalize on good luck.

Vegas built a really deep team who had redundancies at virtually every position. They could overcome injuries because they made sure that they had back-up plans. They cleverly used their cap space to build and add, even when they already had a pretty solid team. They also have made some hard decisions quickly on players, without allowing sentimentality or the price they paid to acquire those players to impact their decisions. At the point they don't think Fleury or Pacioretty can help them win, they cut bait and move on.

To tie this back to the original discussion, I think the obvious question is whether Oilers management is at the same level. I think there's a lot of good reasons to think it's not.

- Willingness to use cap strategies to the best of the team's abilities? Well, last year we had opportunities to LTIR either or both of Yamamoto and Kane and re-use their cap space. Instead we did neither - even though the injury to Kane was clearly never one he fully recovered from. If you look at the history with Holland, it's really even worse. The best example is a couple years ago when he told the assembled press corps that he needed to save cap room just in case 7th defenceman Slater Koekkoek made a return from injury before the playoffs. It's pretty clear he has his head stuck in the sand when it comes to this stuff. There's been rumours the Oilers have been one of the more vocal teams complaining about loopholes, but as long as they exist, if you ignore them and let other teams benefit, then you're just hurting yourself out of spite.

- Willingness to cut bait? Time and time again we've seen the Oilers hold on to players and highly touted prospects until the point where they have negative value. There were points during Kassian's tenure here where he would have had value around the league...we needed to give away significant assets to off-load him. Our record with prospects is even worse. We hype the hell out of them early, we see some points where they have real value but hang on to them even if the team should be able to see some of the negative signs. At the point where they're dealt, it's for peanuts if we get anything at all. Puljujarvi is of course the most recent, but the team has done it so many times. We'll see in the next couple years whether it happens again with Broberg and Holloway - the team leaked at the last deadline that those were the players that teams were repeatedly asking about and that Holland didn't want to part with them for post-season help. If Holloway peaks as a third liner, then should we maybe have considered it? Vegas has - they've dealt away virtually all their good prospects for more help sooner and it has clearly paid off...even if they have lost at least one gem along the way.

Building depth? Man, it's hard to think of a team that's done worse than the Oilers, or that is more wrecked by a single major injury. The Knights were without possibly their best player for months last year, and may have even held him out longer so that they could use his cap space. The Oilers had some key players banged up in the playoffs and couldn't even afford to rest them because there's just no one available to step up there.

The fact is, the Vegas Golden Knights organization is more professional, more organized, more strategic and more committed to trying to win than the Edmonton Oilers have been. Ken Holland has been just the latest train wreck of a general manager but he's continued to under-invest in scouting and analytics, and over-rely on his old man instincts and those of the echo chamber he built around himself.

Where this relates to Draisaitl is that if you're deciding on where to play the most important years of your career - the ones where you have the best chance of being a major factor in your team winning the Cup, you want a management team who is going to do what is needed to win. That's more important than friendships - you can and likely will stay friends with anyone you want to whether you play with them or not. It's more important than the money - you're going to make a fortune anywhere you play if you're Leon Draisaitl, and can probably be flexible to find a deal that works wherever you want to play. Legacy is determined in big part by whether you ever got to carry the Cup around the ice. If the management team doesn't look like they can build the support around you, then you have to decide to move on.

I'm somewhat hopeful that Jeff Jackson has a different, more professional vision for the Oilers and that he's been given the rope to actually force change - including sending the GM to the retirement home after this season - but I do worry whether it's a little late in the game given the impending decisions for both Draisaitl and McDavid. Fingers crossed that it's not.

I do not have fallacies in here, it's a difference of opinion from yours. A false statement would be saying Adam Larsson plays for the Edmonton Oilers which he does not.

A fallacy would be you welcoming other opinions other than yours.

[Updated on: Thu, 28 September 2023 13:05]

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Draisatl Extension	By: Rutuu on Thu, 21 September 2023 00:38
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: inverno76 on Mon, 25 September 2023 13:13
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: RDOilerfan on Mon, 25 September 2023 15:07
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: smyth260 on Mon, 25 September 2023 15:48
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: Dragon_Matt on Mon, 25 September 2023 15:57
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: RDOilerfan on Mon, 25 September 2023 16:00
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: smyth260 on Mon, 25 September 2023 16:08
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: Dragon_Matt on Wed, 27 September 2023 13:38
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: smyth260 on Wed, 27 September 2023 14:48
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: Dragon_Matt on Wed, 27 September 2023 20:44
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: RDOilerfan on Mon, 25 September 2023 15:57
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: CrusaderPi on Mon, 25 September 2023 15:57
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: RDOilerfan on Mon, 25 September 2023 16:03
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: CrusaderPi on Mon, 25 September 2023 16:14
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: RDOilerfan on Thu, 28 September 2023 10:09
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: Kr55 on Thu, 28 September 2023 10:30
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: RDOilerfan on Thu, 28 September 2023 11:12
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: Kr55 on Thu, 28 September 2023 11:37
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: CrusaderPi on Tue, 03 October 2023 11:08
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: Kr55 on Tue, 03 October 2023 11:24
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: CrusaderPi on Thu, 28 September 2023 11:10
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: RDOilerfan on Thu, 28 September 2023 11:26
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: Adam on Thu, 28 September 2023 12:45
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: RDOilerfan on Thu, 28 September 2023 13:03
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: Adam on Thu, 28 September 2023 13:28
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: RDOilerfan on Thu, 28 September 2023 13:36
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: Dragon_Matt on Thu, 28 September 2023 13:58
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: RDOilerfan on Thu, 28 September 2023 15:54
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: inverno76 on Mon, 02 October 2023 10:30
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: Dragon_Matt on Tue, 03 October 2023 09:24
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: inverno76 on Wed, 11 October 2023 09:16
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: Kr55 on Wed, 11 October 2023 09:17
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: Dragon_Matt on Wed, 11 October 2023 09:24
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: CrusaderPi on Mon, 25 September 2023 15:57
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: smyth260 on Mon, 25 September 2023 16:11
Re: Draisatl Extension	By: Kr55 on Thu, 28 September 2023 09:44

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