Edmonton Oilers’ Brass Promises ‘Changes’ To Underachieving Team
Fans of the Edmonton Oilers have had a lot to cheer about this season–highly touted rookie Connor McDavid has proven to be as good as advertised, if not better. Despite missing two months with an injury he’s been productive all season and at times has looked unstoppable. He’s got 16 points in 11 February games and there’s nothing wrong with those numbers. Despite McDavid’s excellence, the team as a whole has struggled. They’ve lost four straight and seven of eight and are almost certainly going to miss the playoffs for the tenth straight season.
So despite a number of positive developments this season the performance just hasn’t been there in the view of General Manager Peter Chiarelli. He didn’t mince words when speaking to the media on Wednesday saying: We haven’t been good enough so there will be changes.” Chiarelli isn’t looking to blindly clean house and has a plan saying: “I like our skill, but I’d like to get bigger and heavier.” He didn’t get into specifics, but one place that they could use some more physicality is on defense where the team has been most vulnerable all season.
While putting underachieving players on notice, Chiarelli admitted that it was tough to get a good assessment on what the team has due to injuries. Of the team’s core group of young players–Jordan Eberle, Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent Hopkins, Oscar Klefbom, Nail Yakupov, Darnell Nurse, Leon Draisaitl and McDavid–five missed significant time due to injury this year. Of course Chiarelli knows that’s just part of hockey: “That’s tough luck for us, and we have to figure it out.”
Most importantly, Chiarelli put underachieving players on notice: “We have some players that have underachieved, we have some players that may need a different venue. Those are the determinations we’ll make between now and trade deadline. If certain players are still around, it’s because the deal wasn’t right or we felt that there was a future for them with us, and we may revisit that situation in the summer.”
Don’t expect any major deals, but the Edmonton media is thinking that pending unrestricted free agent forward Teddy Purcell and pending restricted free agent defenseman Justin Schultz could be gone in a matter of days.