Which Blueprint Will the Oilers Follow to Take McDavid’s Team to the Next Level?

Coming from an Edmonton Oilers point of view, BLH provides you with excerpts from the latest NHL news, rumors, and speculation from all of the internet’s best sites including Spector’s Hockey, The Fourth Period, NHL Trade Talk, The Hockey Writers, Sportsnet, The Athletic, TSN and more!

The Cult of Hockey

Montreal Canadiens were largely built by aggressive trading. Any lessons there for the Edmonton Oilers?

One season ago, albeit a couple of months later in the year, our fair city played host to the last two rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs, which took place in the Edmonton Bubble. With our local Oilers long since out of the running after an upset defeat to Chicago Blackhawks in the Round of 24, we had time on our hands to examine each of the four survivors, to analyze the make-up of their respective rosters and to run side-by-side comparisons to that of the Oilers.

What did we learn? That there’s more than one way to build a contender.

The eventual Stanley Cups champions Tampa Bay Lightning built the core of their powerhouse team through the draft, picking a few superstars in the first round and just as many or more in the second, third, and beyond, then found a pair of undrafted entry-level free agents who panned out in spades. A couple of crucial trades and crafty free agent signings filled out their defence, but for the most part they danced with the ones they brung along.
The team the Bolts beat in the Eastern Conference Finals, the New York Islanders, had similarly built through the draft, though with fewer top end stars. They had used both the UFA and trade market to great advantage in filling out their team with useful depth players, relying on team chemistry and cohesiveness along with great coaching to go deep.
The Dallas Stars made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals on the backs of a few great picks on Day 2 of the draft over the years, and a flurry of activity bringing in older free agents and veterans via the trade route to make one big run at the Grail.
Finally, the Vegas Golden Knights were a new team built through an entirely different channel than the others. They put together the majority of their team through the 2017 expansion draft plus a few highly-rewarding side deals, and a handful of subsequent trades of players acquired through the expansion process for solid returns. Unlike the other contenders, they had very little contribution from players they had drafted themselves, who were (and largely remain) still on the vine.

BLH’s Thoughts: You’ve got to read the rest of McCurdy’s article where he really dives into the creation of Montreal’s and Edmonton’s current rosters. The Oilers aren’t that far off…

I’d say they’re two LWs (goal scorer and power forward), a veteran two-way 3C (face-off specialist), a 2nd pair LHD (big, two-way), and a starting goalie (most important) away from joining Tampa Bay, the Islanders, and Vegas in the upper echelon of the league.

Something along these lines,

Rakell-McDavid-Puljujarvi
Tatar-Draisaitl-Kassian
McLeod-Wennberg-Yamamoto
Martinook–Beagle-Archibald
Shore, Benson

Nurse-Barrie
Goligoski-Larsson
Bear-Bouchard
Russell

Smith
Driedger

If you want to read my thinking for this fantasy roster, scroll about. If you’re tired of roster projections, I don’t blame you, I’m also getting a tad bored with the weekly exercise.

This hopeful mock-up obviously has the Oilers moving on from Caleb Jones, William Lagesson, Mikko Koskinen, and James Neal, Kyle Turris has been buried in the AHL, and the bluechip prospects like Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg are in Bakersfield getting big minutes but available for call-up.

We’ve got Rakell coming in via trade and possibly Beagle if he’s not bought out by Vancouver.

The one thing Tampa, Montreal, Vegas, Dallas, the Islanders, Avalanche, etc. didn’t have during their playoff runs is young defensemen in their top-four who weren’t ELITE. One could add that an elite goalie is helpful too but my feeling there is they’re not required but the goalie that is playing, he’s got to be good and he’s got to be reliable.

With this projected roster, my idea is that Tatar, Goligoski, Martinook, and Beagle would be around on the short term allowing Edmonton’s prospects to marinate some more in the AHL. Rickard Rakell would definitely be the kind of player you’d want to stick around IF he regained his scoring confidence again. I reckon Wennberg would be the sort of middle-six center you could have on the club for 4-5 years if you wanted because he’s got the skill, size, and compete. Tyson Barrie would return to the role he filled last year but the plan would be to swap him and Bouchard down the road and Chris Driedger would have Mike Smith as a mentor for the year with an eye on replacing him as the club’s starter in 2022-23.

Ultimately, the (optimistic) plan would be to start implementing prospects into the roster later in 2021-22 and most definitely in 2022-23. Hence the focus on short-term deals for the older players added.