Back To Square One?

The Edmonton Oilers were absolutely dominated on Sunday night at Rexall Place by the New York Rangers. It was bad, really bad. So bad that I turned it off at 4-0 and skipped the final twenty minutes of play. It’s something I never do, but that’s where we are right now in Edmonton. It’s become painful to watch this Oilers team.

Edmonton concluded a six game homestand with a 2-4-0 record and were out-played by a wide margin in five of those six games. The lone good game Edmonton played? The first one, which was a dominating victory over the struggling Nashville Predators. Sure, the Oilers knocked off the Anaheim Ducks, but they were outplayed big time and gave up over fifty shots in the game. You can thank Ben Scrivens.

The Oilers loss on Sunday night gave them their fortieth regulation loss of the season, a special mark of awful. The Oilers have lost 40 or more regulation contests for the last four, FOUR, full 82 game seasons. That’s an unrivaled level of terrible hockey. The Oilers have failed to be anything near competitive in all four seasons, which is exactly half of their time out of the big spring dance.

For any organization to have that amount of losing go on is bad, but this is just pathetic. There has been minimal effort to truly improve the hockey club, and not a single tough decision has been made to this point in the ‘process’. I’m sorry, but you can’t keep preaching patience and hope that a bunch of college aged kids come and save the day. That isn’t how it works.

Before you say that’s how Pittsburgh and Chicago did it, take a second and look it up, that’s NOT how Chicago and Pittsburgh did it. This is how Florida, Atlanta, the Islanders, this is how they did it. That’s a major problem. Four consecutive full seasons of losing FORTY or more games in regulation is a pathetic milestone achieved by this once proud Edmonton franchise.

There was a sliver of hope for Oilers fans, as Edmonton had gone on a nice little stretch record wise from the end of January to the middle of March. Sure, the record was nice, but a simple look into the stats suggested that it was nothing more than hall-of-fame level goaltending keeping the team afloat. The goaltending, predictably, came back down to normal levels, and the team has been again losing.

The Oilers are not a good possession team, they get out-shot nearly every single night, and they don’t know how to win battles. This is a hockey club that seemingly gives up when the going gets tough. This is a huge, huge issue. This is not the late 1990’s/early 2000’s teams I fell in love with, the ones that gave a damn and didn’t care that they were not the most talented bunch of players.

This is Oilers team is one that has a lot more talent than those teams had combined, but that is not willing to go the extra mile, doesn’t make the sacrifice for the guy next to them, and doesn’t know how to win the battles you have to win at the NHL level. These are young players that, in short, do not know how to play the NHL game.

The talent is undeniable, but you can argue that many other things are lacking from this club. There are not enough NHL players on this team, the coaching staff is a mess, and the egos are out of control. It’s, to put it politely, a disaster in Edmonton, and we are no further along than at the end of the 2009-10 season.

To be successful, you need to be good in net, on defense, and down the middle. Ben Scrivens and Viktor Fasth have the net covered, but the other two positions are a disaster. On defense, the Oilers employ three players who are not NHL level in Anton Belov, Philip Larsen and Mark Fraser, and at the center ice position only have one proven NHL player in Boyd Gordon.

The team is, to be brutally honest, set up to fail. Andrew Ference is a decent number four, Jeff Petry a decent number three, and Justin Schultz a decent number five option. Martin Marincin is emerging, but is still in the early chapters of his NHL career. That’s not even near good enough.

In the middle, Ryan Smyth is a winger, Sam Gagner does not understand what defense is and is not nearly a good enough offensive player to make up for it, and RNH is still developing, although much slower than anticipated and I’m beginning to get worried if he will ever be a true number one center. Boyd Gordon, the veteran third liner, is the only legit proven NHL option this team can turn to right now.

The Oilers are a highly unbalanced unit, and will continue to suffer loss after loss and terrible season after terrible season until it is addressed. The Oilers are built on the wings, which is the absolute wrong way to build a hockey club. No team built it that way and won. Pittsburgh and Boston did it down the middle, while Chicago and LA did it from the back-end out.

If the Oilers want to compete anytime soon, they’ll need two NHL veteran defenders that can handle big minutes, another veteran center, and a few big wingers that can play. I’m not talking Steve MacIntyre and Luke Gazdic either, I’m talking guys that can actually take and make a pass at the NHL level.

The Oilers began the rebuild from hell in January of 2010. It has wiped out the 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13 and now 2013-14 seasons. Are we any further along on the road to competing? When looking at the stats, there is marginal, if any, improvement from the 2009-10 season. The Oilers’ corsi numbers are pathetic, and they get out shot by hefty margins nearly every night.

Things aren’t getting better for this team, you can argue they are getting worse. Are we back to square one in Edmonton in terms of the rebuild. On ice product wise, yes, yes we are.

The Oilers were built terribly wrong, and not only do they not have the horses to compete, but there is something fundamentally wrong with this club. It’s time to make the tough calls, fire guys like Steve Smith, Kelly Buchberger and Freddy Chabot, and make the tough hockey decisions to trade some popular players to bring balance to this roster.

The Oilers have wasted four, five, heck eight years trying to get this thing right, and we are still in the gutter. MacT, Mr. Katz, hell even Kevin Lowe, someone step up and save this team. We’re desperate, beaten and battered. This rebuild is broken and back to square one. Someone save this team, someone save this team.