So What Now?
After another disappointing season for the Oilers, what do we do now? Whether or not MacT stays with the team is up in the air, although I hope he is gone and soon. This team needs a new face and a clean slate going into next season.
It looks as though Omak or whatever his name was has signed with a Russian club, so we won't be getting the youtube shootout wonderkid many were excited about. But something many people are sleeping on is that Eberle just signed a 3 year contract and should be on the way next year. I think he was easily one of the best performers in the world juniors, so that is something we should all be excited about.
Sounds like Rob Schremp is gone, or at least from everything I've seen an heard. Contract is up and no one wants him back. Pretty big waste of talent, but he seems to have some head issues of his own and I doubt he'd ever work out here.
For next year to be honest, I'd like to see us bring in a coach with a very good track record with developing young talent. Looking at our youngsters we have:
Gagner
Cogliano
Nillson
Eberle
Brule
and then there's our young d men and other young forwards. Hell, O'Sullivan and Hemmer are both still 24 and 25 respectively. But on the other end of the spectrum we have Horc earning 7 mil next year, Penner earning 4+ on the 4th line, and about 87 billion dollars tied up between Souray, Visnovsky and Gilbert.
We need to let the youth movement take the team over, but problem is at 7 mil a season Horc is untradable, and is not 1st line center talent. Some of our larger contracts are untradable unless we load the deals up with young talent and picks, which seems a little counter productive. I think we would see a huge benefit to Penner by a new coach, seeing as how MacT thinks Liam Reddox is more deserving of ice time.
That leaves us with goalies. As much as I love how Rollie played for us this year, I think its time to hand over the reigns to someone else. Make Jeff Deslauriers our starter and see how he does. It kind of falls into the youth movement scheme. If we go this route I wish Roloson all the best, we've had some ups and downs, but he's been the cornerstone of our team in the good times over the last few years, and we owe him a lot.
With all that, I say make the playoffs next year, get last place, I don't care either way. We need to let the young guys start to shape the team for us, and if we need to improve lets get a top 1-5 draft pick, not the mid round garbage picks we're used to.
What are the thoughts of other Oil fans out there?
Last edited by RStar : 04-14-2009 at 04:15 PM.
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So What Now?
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