Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying

Get busy living or get busy dying.

Those are the choices open to the Oilers right now.

Blow it all up, trade some more players, mix up the lines, sell free-agents for picks, move picks for veterans, fire Chiarelli, fire Mclellan, and move the team to Seattle.

Or take a step back, let the season play out while you take your lumps and look at it as an object lesson in putting too much faith in everything breaking just right.

I think many fans and some media are clamouring for the former option. It feels good. It feels like you’re doing something; addressing roster holes or bringing in someone who could make a difference, change things up and so on. And it makes for easy copy.

But making a move just to make a move is what gets you Patrick O’Sullivan for Erik Cole or convinces you that Kurtis Foster fixes your power play.

And making a move when you’re panicked is what gets you Robert Nilsson and Ryan O’Marra for Ryan Smyth (and yes, I know they got a 1^st round pick as well, but we all knew Prendergast wasn’t going to hit paydirt on that).

So the other option is to take a step back, look at what you’ve got and what the results from this season are telling you as to where you need to go, and then call your shot. It isn’t sexy and it isn’t quick and it certainly doesn’t make for a great storyline in the papers and sports’ sites. But it is the right call.

The panic move would be to send Maroon packing for a pick at the deadline. Or to move Nugent-Hopkins for a veteran scoring winger or another depth defenseman. The pitfalls that surround management right now are many and the temptation to tumble in beckons.

So what do the Oilers need to do to get better that doesn’t also crater their future?

Goaltending will work itself out, but adding a more established backup is an obvious one. That or really dig in and figure out if Brossoit or Ellis are ready to handle the task. Talbot’s injury makes the latter point moot and regardless, I think this team could do better at backup by looking to sign Aaron Dell as a UFA this summer in the role not only of backup but also potential replacement for Cam Talbot.

The penalty kill is closing in on a place in NHL history as one of the worst. Ever. That’s some pretty impressive territory given some of the sad-sack teams this league has boasted over a century. I went and looked at their PK% as of Dec 4th and had to go all the way back to 1988-89 Leafs and 1985-86 Kings to find a team that finished the season with a penalty kill percentage as low.

Fixing that is equal parts scheme/execution and personnel, but you don’t go trading major assets for that and it can be addressed relatively inexpensively.

Adding another right-handed defenseman and at least two wingers who can skate and bury chances is the real meat of the problem.

On the topic of defense, the left side is set with Klefbom, Nurse and Russell. The right side would be good with Larsson, Sekera and Benning. But the problem becomes one where if Sekera, or any other defender in your top four, is injured then there’s no slack in the line to absorb that kind of loss.

Brendan Davidson covers off the bottom pairing, 5-6-7th defenseman role. They’ve traded him once already though, so I don’t believe they have a whole lot of faith in him long-term and he’s another left-handed defenseman in a corps lousy with them.

So, with that in mind, finding someone on the right side who can slide from 3rd pairing to 2nd for a month, if need be, is likely the better avenue to pursue.

The center depth chart is, frankly, pretty good. McDavid, Draisaitl, Nugent-Hopkins and Strome could be your centers 1 through 4 and, to be honest, that’s pretty remarkable. Letestu is the center that currently moves Strome into the wing rotation but I suspect he leaves this off-season and the Oilers will look to replace him internally. I prefer Strome on the wing, but I haven’t yet eliminated his potential for playing down the middle.

When it comes to wingers, things are a little more tricky.

If we assume that Maroon goes via trade or free agency then the LW side runs Lucic, Khaira and the right side with Puljujarvi, Slepyshev, Caggiula and Kassian. Strome, and Draisaitl will rotate in and out of the right side, as McLellan sees fit.

On the right side, Puljujarvi is gradually working his way towards establishing himself as a 1^st line player while Slepyshev is being touted as trade bait. Kassian is signed for another year and Strome likely gets re-signed this summer, though I wonder if it is at a reduced rate. That leaves only Drake Caggiula.

Caggiula is the sort of player whom the Oilers need to look to upgrade upon. It isn’t that he is a poor player, but he represents a baseline for NHL duty and in order to improve the team they have to look to areas such as these for more effective options.

That means they need one right-winger to replace Caggiula, preferably one who can also provide some effective penalty-killing duty and chip in 30 points on the year, and one left-winger to replace Maroon.

In other words, they’ll need a bottom 6 RW and a top 6 LW. Manageable, provided you target the right sorts of players and don’t count your money at the till.

I’d target Jonathan Marchessault and either Leo Komarov or Magnus Paajarvi.

These aren’t massive roster changes I’m suggesting – while there are some major ones that would be worthwhile, they are highly unlikely – and they could be accomplished at a modest cost of draft picks or prospects.

The problem though is that this only gets the Oilers back to where they were last season.

But as I said at the beginning, you have to decide if you want to patch the hull or blow more holes in the boat.

Address a few lower-key roster issues and you can improve the team overall and continue to build from there.

Make drastic changes and you’re putting a gun to the head of this roster and likely the next five years of Oilers hockey.

So which is it going to be?

Get busy living or get busy dying.