Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
This itself is a pretty scathing indictment of the Oilers handling of players and development procedures. Gagner, Paajarvi-Svenson, Yakupov, Nugent-Hopkins, and J. Schultz were essentially handed top line minutes and expectations straight out of their first NHL camps, as if management and the coaches honestly believed that their draft status (or UFA status in Schultz's case) was an indication of fulfilled potential.
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All those players that you listed were better than any other options that existed though with the possible exception of Yakupov who is an interesting case because of the ever-present KHL risk, and they did send Paajarvi-Svensson down to the AHL in his second year much like Baertschi actually. I think that the problem that the Oilers have isn't the handling of the young players it is the fact that they haven't had a base to build around, they are throwing them to the wolves without the support required and that is more an indictment of their drafting from 2002-07 where they selected one top 6 forward (Gagner) and the two good bottom six pieces they drafted (Stoll and Cogliano) they were traded away for what amounts to a second round picks and failed dreams (Vishnovski --> Whitney --> Nothing). That is a half decade of zero production on the draft front and the Oilers are reaping what they sowed at the time. The players that they had the opportunity to select weren't as good and those that they did select were put into bad situations based on the Oilers history and poor management. Drafting players, especially in the later rounds, takes a good 3-4 years to show dividends at a minimum.
The Oilers aren't trying to suck, they suck because they have had poor management in the past and that will likely continue to be the case unless they change their management, which doesn't appear to be likely to happen.