Eulogy

Here lies the 2013-14 Edmonton Oilers season. We barely knew ye, only 82 games old and no post-season to speak of. It was a frustrating journey, one that fell way short of expectations, one that saw us lose many familiar faces, and one that frustrated us on so many levels on so many occasions. It’s over now, and we look towards another day, the 2014-15 Oilers season.

16 teams will start the greatest journey in sports on Wednesday night, the Stanley Cup playoffs. For the eighth spring in a row, Edmonton will be one of the 14 teams licking their wounds and wondering how they join these 16 teams. That is a job for GM Craig MacTavish and coach Dallas Eakins. I’ll be getting into that this week, looking at what the team needs in coaching, at forward, and on defense. For today however, we reflect.

To Those We Lost:

A lot of players left us during the year, goalies Jason Labarbera and Devan Dubnyk were moved out after awful starts, while Ilya Bryzgalov was given a shot at the playoffs after serving well. Corey Potter got a new lease on life in Boston, Nick Schultz in Columbus after a tough and disappointing Oilers career, and Denis Grebeshkov’s short lived comeback attempt, which resulted in an AHL stint.

There are three guys that will be sorely missed in Edmonton. Ladislav Smid was dealt to Calgary in November after an awful start by the team. It was a move that shocked everyone, and one the likely has to do with not fitting into coach Dallas Eakins’ system. Smid has struggled in Calgary, but he was a hard worker who played a tough style on the back-end and basically grew up as an NHL player in Edmonton.

Ales Hemsky had never seen another NHL jersey before the trade deadline, but his move to Ottawa saw that change. It stung on deadline day, and it still stings today. Hemsky brought some unreal moments to the table, and left Edmonton in the franchise’s top-ten for scoring. That’s no small achievement. He has been reborn in Ottawa as well, tearing it up for the Sens.

Lastly, we learned on Friday that Ryan Smyth was hanging up the skates, as he emotionally did Saturday night. Smyth was the heart and soul of this franchise for many years, and his trade in 2007 was the turning point where the Oilers went from playoff team to bottom feeder. Smyth has been talked about at length on this blog, and he will be certainly missed in retirement.

Craig MacTavish has changed this roster in a major way, and will likely do more of that in the summer. Looking back, it was a busy season transaction wise, and we remember all those that put that Oilers jersey on for the final time.

Failed Expectations:

Coming into this season, the sun was shinning bright. The Edmonton Oiler rebuild was finally going to take the giant leap we had been waiting for, and at worst the team was going to fight for the final position in the western conference, heck, with the summer improvements, this team could get into the playoffs!

In the season preview show of the Oilers Rig radio, both Dave Gordon and I picked the team to make the Stanley Cup playoffs, but we couldn’t have been more wrong on that. The Oilers again finished in the bottom three in the NHL, and again pointed towards the future and another 18 year old savior in the draft.

It was arguably the most frustrating season of this rebuild, because expectations were high. Goaltending killed this team in the first month and a half, then it was the defensive unit that badly needs help, and then it was the secondary scorers that dried up. Defensive coverage up front became a major issue as well.

Thankfully, goaltending appears to have been fixed thanks to in-season trades, while both defense and defensive coverage up front will have to be addressed during the long off-season that has finally arrived.

The expectations of a good year were shattered in the first twenty games, and we have been trying to put the pieces together since. We’ll do that at length this off-season, and we’ll all hope that this is the last off-season for a long time that we are looking straight into the eyes of summer so darn early.

The Sun Will Come Up Tomorrow? Maybe:

We’ve been hearing about the future for years, and eventually it is bound to get here right? It’s not guaranteed, but with a few solid moves the Oilers can be a much improved team next year. Playoff bound? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, but they can help their chances. The Oilers have a lot of needs, and we will talk about those throughout the coming week.

Dallas Eakins will be in his second year, the young players will have another year of experience under their belts, the team will have consistent goaltending from game one, and the team will likely get some improvements in the off-season. Will next year be the year that the sun comes up? I’m not sold on it, but it’s possible.

I hate looking to the future so early, but it is all we have right now in Edmonton. Looking back on this tire fire of a season, there is only one quote I can look to, it’s always darkest before dawn.

We’ll gather the pieces of this tough season, pick ourselves up, and we’ll trudge forward as we do every single spring. We’ll be ready on June 27th when it is draft night, and be ready on July 1st when hopefully the Oilers go shopping to fix this roster. After a year like this, in my mind the most disappointing in franchise history, things can really only go up.

Thanks for sticking around all year Oiler fans, it was tough, and now we can finally put it to rest and bury the 2013-14 Edmonton Oilers’ season.

Now, let’s roll up our sleeves and try to fix this mess.