hockeykid11

I've been thinking the past few days, and ideas and opinions started flowing through my head about what I think the Oilers are, in terms of what they need to do and decide.

First of all, with the departure of Marchant, the Oilers need a centerman who can replace him as a checking 3rd liner. Some people have been saying Comrie should, but they are talking about his one year stunt of producing goals in the first line, not the other 9 years he's been a checker. So it narrows it down to Shawn Horcoff and Marty Reasoner. there are several good things about both young players. First of all, Horcoff is a much better skater, has a more offensive touch and has confidence after easily being one of the best players in the playoffs for the Oilers and the IIHF world tournament. Marty Reasoner, on the other hand, is a better faceoff guy, and kills penalties a lot more effectivley. Both, at the beginning of last year, were shifting out of the lineup every game, but they then showed where they may be next year, when they were nearing the end of the year. Reasoner started playing with 2 great defensive teammates, Ethan Moreau (who I hope they will sign soon), and Fernando Pisani, who were the main checking line. Horcoff was on a line with mixed toughness and scoring, with Brad Isbister and Georges Laraque. Instead of being fourth liners, they drifted away to their own role.

The Oilers have a lot of depth in forwards and this is how I think the lineup will look if it stays tthe same with rookies coming in from the AHL affiliate (Pisani will be the extra man):

Smyth-Comrie-Hemsky
York-Horcoff-Dvorak
Isbister-Reasoner-Chimera
Moreau-Stoll-Laraque

Now shifting over to the defence. I think the Oilers have a lot of stay-at-home defencemen on their team. I think they need to add an offensive minded defenceman. You might think Eric Brewer, but he never does much offence until he wants to. Marc-Andre Bergeron will be in the Oilers top 7 d-men, and he showed last year he will be offensive. If the Oilers can get a good deal and trade one of their forwards for a scoring defence, then I say go for it. Right now the top 7 defencemen are (iin no particular order): Eric Brewer, Scott Ferguson, Steve Staios, Alexei Semenov, Cory Cross, Jason Smith, Marc-Andre Bergeron.

As for goaltending, I think it's fine. Now with Markkanen gone, Ty Conklin can step up and prove that he's NHL material now. He had a great season with the Hamilton Bulldogs and came close to winning the Calder Cup. Salo is great in net, but can be inconsistent at times, but he is a great goalie for the money.

Finishing up, Smyth signing before the arbitration hearing is great also. The Oilers could not have afforded to lose him. And the Craig Simpson signing was a great signing also. He should get the Oilers going on the PP and hopefully ttry to get past the first round of the playoffs.

Thoughts anyone?

hockeyfanatic

The oilers had a very sound team in the days of the smyth-weight-guerin line up. We still had marchant and grier and ever buchburger a while back. Now what's happened is that we have lost so many players either due to free agency or one of the key factors money! The oilers seem to be a team that brings up young talent, trains them and gets them into the nhl, makes them well lets say "stars" and then dishes or loses them to other high-end teams who have lost of "money". I still see them making a decent run towards the cup, like hockeykid11 said now that they have simpson on their coaching team, they have an excellent staff. I was reading in the paper the other day on how the coaching staff, most of them, of which have been or come from the oiler "family". 1. Gm lowe: first player ever drafted by oil in 1979. 2. Former centre Craig Mctavish won four cups with the oil, head coach. 3. Charlie huddy won five cups in e-town, a.coach 4.Billy Moores who although never played with the oilers coached the Uof A golden bears
Now they bring in simpson as well. The oilers have real depth in their coaching staff and i think one of the best in the nhl!

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