[Caged Great]

The Oilers are screwed simply put.

In order to flesh out a lineup, they are going to have to place a bunch of youngsters on ELC's or Versteeg like vets taking a hope to catch on somewhere contract just to fill out their bottom 9 spots on the roster (3rd/4th line 3rd pair and backup)

That's a lot to put on any prospect base. The difference between Pittsburgh, Chicago and the Oilers is that each of those teams built up a quality prospect base. The Oilers have maybe 4 prospects that are any good. Puljujarvi and Yamamoto are the only two "likely" NHL prospects out of the bunch. Brossoit is still a toss up on whether he'll be good enough to make it and Jones is okay. That's it though. Everything else is in the long shot category. Not very good.

There is no way around it, the Oilers will be good enough to make the playoffs over the next handful of years, but unless they fluke out in terms of have the right opponents, I don't ever see them getting outside of the 2nd round. If Talbot regresses at all, they won't even get there in the first place.