Complete Preview for the Edmonton Oilers' 2014-15 Season
“If you must rebuild, then this is the way to do it,” proclaimed the National Post, before declaring that the team’s playoff drought was soon to end.
“You feel it in the room,” the team’s head coach was quoted as saying. “I feel it and sense it, and normally if the coach feels it you're the last guy to feel the optimism of improvement.”
The National Post further recorded one of the club’s young stars expressing his optimism about the Oilers contending in the near future. Another professed excitement about the foundation of great core guys the team had assembled.
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That article was written in 2008. Coach Craig MacTavish left the team, returned again and is now the general manager. The core group of that rebuild is now gone, including the two stars quoted in the piece; Andrew Cogliano was traded away three years ago, and Sam Gagner was dealt this summer. The hopeful resurgence of the team is still just over the horizon.
Now, in 2014, players, coaches and managers still preach optimism, but they do so with the greater care engendered by years of disappointment. The fans are as cynical about the team as a fanbase can be. The media no longer writes gushing previews. There is still an expectation of improvement, but it’s one tempered by experience.
“I think they’ll probably be better,” is a typical comment, but it’s a comment that was as relevant in 2008 as it is now. It has yet to be fulfilled in any significant way.
What We Learned in 2013-14
The overriding lesson of 2013-14 was simply that time was going to be needed for a new administration to correct the errors of the old regime. It’s a lesson that the club’s new management and its fans took in together.
A pair of press conferences streamed live on the team’s official site nicely demonstrate the change.
“I’m an impatient guy, and I bring that impatience to this situation.” MacTavish said at his introductory presser on April 15, 2013. A few moments further in he added, “I don’t think we’re that far off.”
A year to the day later, the GM’s tone had changed markedly.
“There’s lots of work ahead,” MacTavish said. “There’s lots of work to do. That is very clear to everybody in our organization. ... We had, internally, high expectations for our group from the start, and right from the start of the year, things didn’t go well. We did not live up to the expectations that we had internally, nor did we live up to the external expectations from our fans.”
The 2013-14 team simply wasn’t very good at any position.
The forwards struggled, with Gagner in particular having difficulties after an injury suffered in the preseason. The defence was shaky at best, leaning hard on an underwhelming top pairing of Andrew Ference and Justin Schultz.
Most critically, the goaltending imploded, as starting goalie Devan Dubnyk began the season in a tailspin and never recovered; he was ultimately traded twice and finished the year in the AHL. Rookie NHL coach Dallas Eakins made mistakes along the way and deservedly took a portion of the blame for the club’s results.
To its credit, the team’s management group appears dedicated to addressing these shortcomings, bolstering every position and even overhauling Eakins’ support staff (the most notable change in the latter category being the addition of veteran coach Craig Ramsay). Whether it will be enough is the question of 2014-15.
Outlook for 2014-15
Sweeping change was visited upon the organization over the summer. Trades were made and free agents were signed, often at incredible expense; between Benoit Pouliot, Mark Fayne and Nikita Nikitin, the Oilers spent over $40 million adding new pieces to their group.
The one position not addressed via either route was at centre, but even there Edmonton made a key addition, selecting German-born pivot Leon Draisaitl third overall at the summer’s draft. The expectation is that Draisaitl will immediately move into the team’s lineup, and frankly, it needs the help at centre.
On the wings, the additions of Teddy Purcell (trade) and Pouliot (free agency) give the team the depth to compete with virtually any club in the league at that specific position. That isn’t really a concern, but a quick glance at the depth chart makes it clear that all those wonderful wingers are going to have to compensate for some real question marks up the middle:
| Taylor Hall | Ryan Nugent-Hopkins | Jordan Eberle |
| David Perron | Leon Draisaitl | Teddy Purcell |
| Benoit Pouliot | Mark Arcobello | Nail Yakupov |
| Matt Hendricks | Boyd Gordon | Tyler Pitlick |
| Luke Gazdic (IR) | Anton Lander | Jesse Joensuu |
The team is expected to carry 14 forwards, but enforcer Luke Gazdic is a strong possibility to start the year on injured reserve after shoulder surgery, a move that would allow the team to defer a decision on waiver-eligible depth forwards Tyler Pitlick and Jesse Joensuu.
There will be a shift in strategy from years past. In his July 1 press conference (again streamed live on the team’s official site), MacTavish laid out the plan.
“We’ve talked about how we want to build our team going forward,” he told the assembled media. “We want three offensive lines and we want a line, probably centered by Boyd Gordon...that you can start predominantly in the defensive zone. Then you’ve got three possession lines, or three lines that you can count on for offence.”
Edmonton will likely elect to keep its top line of Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Jordan Eberle together in a power-versus-power role to start the season and support them with a middle-six group loaded with some decent offensive options. The fourth line, probably founded on the duo of Gordon and Matt Hendricks, will be used as a defensive-zone specialty unit.
It’s an interesting plan, and one that fits the Oilers’ personnel.
On defence, two experienced additions figure prominently, while the goaltending was reworked late in 2013-14:
| Nikita Nikitin | Justin Schultz | Ben Scrivens |
| Martin Marincin | Jeff Petry | Viktor Fasth |
| Andrew Ference | Mark Fayne | |
| Keith Aulie |
MacTavish is gambling that one of Ben Scrivens or Viktor Fasth can emerge as a legitimate No. 1. Both provided the Oilers with strong play late in the season and have shown flashes of brilliance over their NHL careers, but neither has a long track record. It’s a reasonable bet that one or both will play well, but it isn’t a sure thing.
The defence is even more of a gamble. Justin Schultz has been hyped as a critical piece of the team’s rebuild, but he struggled last year; he’ll likely be joined on the top pairing by Nikitin, who had fallen out of favour in Columbus and been relegated to depth role. Schultz has exceptional potential, and it wasn’t all that long ago that Nikitin was excelling on a No. 1 tandem alongside Fedor Tyutin, but they’re a real risk in a feature role.
Improved depth should help. Jeff Petry and Martin Marincin performed well in a shutdown role over the back half of the season, while Mark Fayne has long faced top competition alongside Andy Greene in New Jersey. There are some options available to the coaching staff here, and top prospects like Darnell Nurse and Oscar Klefbom could surprise and carve a niche out for themselves in training camp.
Overall, it’s a roster with some significant problems but also one that should be a good bit better than the one that was deployed by the Oilers last season. Of course, it will have to be; Edmonton finished last in the West with 77 points and a minus-67 goal differential. Even substantial improvement may well see the team fall short of a postseason berth.
The Oilers will probably be better, even significantly better. But the playoffs aren’t likely.
Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work. Statistics via NHL.com.
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