It’s been a fun week for me going back through the years and picking out the best and worst moves by both Steve Tambellini and Craig MacTavish. Now, we finish the mini-series by looking at the top five worst moves made by the Edmonton Oilers under Craig MacTavish.
As I mentioned in the best moves piece, we’re picking from a much smaller timeline, MacT only served as GM of this team for around two years. That said, we have plenty of candidates to pick from, which is too bad.
The Moves:
5.) Oilers trade G Devan Dubnyk to NSH for F Matt Hendricks – I have no problem with Matt Hendricks, I like him a lot as a player. He’s a useful part of Edmonton’s bottom six group, and I’m glad he’ll be back for a third season in Edmonton. He’s not why this move makes the list.
Prior to the 2013-14 season, Dubnyk had improved each and every season for Edmonton. MacTavish sold him down the river during the summer of 2013 by questioning him as a starter and then publicly pursuing other options on the trade market.
Now, Dubnyk deserves some blame because he didn’t play well enough, but MacTavish didn’t exactly set him up to succeed. On top of that, he sold off a pretty solid asset at the worst possible time.
The results? Dubnyk was a star for the Minnesota Wild and earned a big time contract this past spring.
4.) Oilers Sign UFA D Andrew Ference – I hate putting Ference here because I really like him. He’s an awesome guy and he’s a great person in the community. The stuff he does, from the November Project to the recycling initiatives, are great and I love that he still does all of that.
On the ice, however, Ference just has not lived up to the contract given to him by Craig MacTavish. He was a number five defender when he came over, and is likely a number six or a number seven now. He can still play in this league, but not high in the order.
He was signed to be a top-four defender, a role he simply could not fill. On top of that, he’s being paid $3.625 million per season for the next two years.
Unfortunately, it’s a contract that has hindered what GM Peter Chiarelli could do with his defense this summer. MacTavish went and paid a player for a role that player just simply could not fill.
3.) Oilers Sign UFA D Nikita Nikitin – I’ll be frank, Nikitin was Edmonton’s worst defender last season. He was too slow and often beaten by opposing forwards. That led to many chances against, and as a direct result, many goals against.
Nikitin came to camp out of shape last fall and missed a lot of time with injury throughout the year. He’s owed $4.5 million this coming season in a deal that, like Ference’s, hindered what the Oilers could do this summer with their roster.
This was another case of MacT paying a player to be a top-four defender who, quite frankly, was not built for the role. A reclamation project paid to be the finished product. The results were predictable.
The good news? Nikitin is a short-term contract and could be gone a year from now should things remain bad on the ice.
2.) Oilers trade D Jeff Petry to MTL for 2015 2nd and 4th round picks – The Edmonton Oilers came into this off-season starving for top-four defenders, something that easily could have been avoided. MacTavish’s greatest mistake on the back-end was giving Petry a ‘prove-it’ one year deal.
Petry proved-it and then some, as he was Edmonton’s top defender all year long and carried the weak blue-line. Edmonton never approached him with a new contract, and as a result Petry was shipped out of town for far less than market value at the deadline this past March.
Petry went to Montreal and ended up being one of their top-four defenders by a long-shot. MacTavish dropped the ball big time, and made his hockey club much worse by trading Petry away.
1.) Oilers Hire Dallas Eakins – At the time, I loved the move, and I know a lot of you did too. However, Eakins was a disaster in Edmonton. He got the club moving in the right direction in terms of possession stats, but backwards everywhere else.
The club fell in the standings, couldn’t score goals, and gave them up at rates we have simply never seen. Even worse? Eakins couldn’t get the power-play to work and had every young player regress under him.
I think Dallas Eakins can still be a good head coach in the NHL, but he took too much stock in the advanced stats and not enough into actual on-ice play. The results, predictably, were disastrous, and the Oilers ended up as a much worse hockey team under Eakins.
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