‘I’m very uncritical on this team’: NHL insider’s wise words on Edmonton Oilers Author of the article:David Staples • Edmonton Journal

This in from NHL insider Brian Lawton, former player agent and GM, his wise words on the Edmonton Oilers, that it’s still too early to judge this team one way or another, especially with all the injures, and that the story will be told in the playoffs.

Said Lawton to Bob Stauffer of Oilers Now: “At the end of the day, this roster has been reshaped. It’s been reshaped with a little more tilt towards older players that are built to win in the playoffs. So I’m very uncritical on this team because I want to see that last part, because that really is what matters.”

Lawton continued: “They deserve the right. They’ve had a good year. They’ve lost their two superstars for a while here. It’s taken a little bit of wind out of their sails. And yet they’re still considered an elite team in this league. And now, the last step in the evaluation for this season will be of the playoffs for this team. And this group of guys has earned that right. So we’ll see how they do. And then people can call and scream at you or me or say, ‘You know what, this team was really well put together.’ I feel like anything short of certainly making it to the conference final will be viewed strongly as a disappointment. You can understand that when they went to the Finals last year and their team has been on the rise for the last few. But that’s just the nature of the business. And I’m reserving that judgement.”

1. The Oilers haven’t been as good under coach Kris Knoblauch this year as they were last season under him. Their Grade A, 5-alarm shot and goal differentials are all down, from +4.6 to +3.1 on Grade A shots, from +1.5 to +0.9 on 5-alarm shots and from +1.0 to +0.3 on goals. Much of that has to do with injury, however.

2. At first in the McDavid/Draisaitl era it was about ending the Decade of Darkness and making the playoffs. That happened n 2016-17. The team took a huge hit after that with severe injuries to the club’s two best d-men, Andrej Sekera and Oscar Klefbom, in the 2017 playoffs.

The two top d-men were never the same. That doomed the Oilers to two more seasons of woe in 2017-18 and 2018-19. But since that time Edmonton’s been on the rise, so much so that without injuries to key players such as Leon Draisaitl, Darnell Nurse and Evander Kane in last year’s playoffs, the Oilers would likely have won the Cup.

3. The warm glow around this team was so great late last June that interim GM Jeff Jackson decided to keep around veteran role players, namely the team’s solid playoff third line of Adam Henrique, Mattias Janmark and Connor Brown, and to add in more veterans, Jeff Skinner and Viktor Arvidsson. It looked to be a fine play until St. Louis exposed Jackson’s lack of salary cap acumen by offer sheeting Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg, a brutal blow to the Oilers only partially made up for by the quick work of new GM Stan Bowman bringing in useful Vasily Podkolzin and Ty Emberson.

4. Bowman has added Trent Frederic, Kasperi Kapanen, Max Jones, John Klingberg and Jake Walman since that time but it’s still difficult to evaluate Bowmman’s team due to injuries to Frederic, Klingberg, Connor McDavid, Kane, Draisaitl, Stuart Skinner and Mattias Ekholm.

5. I agree with Lawton here. The team chose Henrique over younger, faster Ryan McLeod. It chose Viktor Arvidsson over younger, faster Warren Foegele. By circumstance, it essentially chose Jeff Skinner over young, faster Dylan Holloway. But we’ll see in the playoffs how it all plays out. Maybe players like Corey Perry, Henrique, Janmark and Ekholm aren’t going to get it done again in the playoffs, but I’m going to keep my powder dry before blasting Jackson and Bowman’s work or praising it.

This team was built for the playoffs. That’s how we should judge the work done by Jackson and Bowman. And I agree with Lawton that anything less than Conference final appearance will be seen as a failure.

And it should be seen as one.