It took 14 years. Seven seasons of agony, between 2009 and 2016, a brief brightening of one year, a relapse of two seasons, before beginning a rise to the top in 2020, a final four in 2022 and, finally, the final of the Stanley Cup.
And even. If the Oilers hadn’t fired coach Jay Woodcroft on Nov. 12, with a 3-9-1 record, already far from a playoff spot, Edmonton probably wouldn’t be jubilant today.
We will not take the opportunity this morning to extol the virtues of reconstruction. Despite their first participation in the Stanley Cup final since 2006, the Oilers are not a model of excellence in this area.
On this account, supporters of the Canadian would have to wait until 2031 for a lasting participation in the playoffs and in 2036 for a first final since 2021…
It takes an element of luck, flair and wise decisions to succeed in a reconstruction between five and ten years. Edmonton had neither the luck nor the flair and made many bad decisions.
The Oilers drafted first overall three years in a row between 2010 and 2012. These were not grandiose vintages. There was no Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, Steven Stamkos or Patrick Kane.
2010 first-round pick Taylor Hall has developed into a quality winger. But he will have only had two seasons of more than 65 points in his career. His 93-point season, including 39 goals, in New Jersey, after he was traded for defenseman Adam Larsson, represented an accident. At 32, he was on his sixth team this year.
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, first choice of another average vintage, in 2011, shows all his usefulness this spring in the playoffs. But apart from his offensive explosion of 104 points last year, he will never have reached 70 points in his 13-year career.
Then came the infamous 2012 vintage. The owner put his fist on the table to impose Nail Yakupov in first place. The team’s scouts wanted to draft defenseman Ryan Murray first overall. Murray was a little worse than Yakupov, third pick Alex Galchenyuk’s career ended in an Arizona taxi, and Griffin Reinhart was a failure.
Defenseman Morgan Rielly was the first impact player, drafted fifth overall by Toronto, but the best players, goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy and Filip Forsberg, were taken 19th.e and 11e respectively.
The Oilers’ reconstruction in 2014 was therefore not based on solid foundations. It was falsely believed that drafting three times first overall would allow this team to reach the top.
The arrival of general manager Peter Chiarelli didn’t help. Offer on the 15the overall pick in 2015 plus a second-round pick for young defenseman Griffin Reinhart didn’t help either. Nor offer a monstrous contract to Milan Lucic and get rid of defender Justin Schultz for a third-round pick.
But the Oilers had the luxury of landing Leon Draisaitl third overall a year earlier, in 2014, behind Aaron Ekblad and Sam Reinhart, and they won the Connor McDavid lottery, ahead of the Buffalo Sabers, the year following, a few months after Chiarelli was hired.
So the real rebuild began in 2014. But still, the fourth overall pick in 2016, Jesse Puljujarvi, did not develop as expected. The defender drafted after him, in fifth place, Olli Juolevi, was hardly better, but the sixth player chosen, Matthew Tkachuk, is not bad…
The Edmonton Oilers and the Florida Panthers will therefore face each other in the final. The former have been drafted five times in the top 5 between 2010 and 2016, the second four times between 2010 and 2014.
But what followed proved to us that it was not enough to draft among the first. It took the arrival of good managers to make the achievements bear fruit.
Owen Beck stands out
PHOTO DUANE BURLESON, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Owen Beck
The Canadian’s hope drafted first in the second round in 2022 (33e in total), Owen Beck, had a great Memorial Cup final with two goals, and the Saginaw Spirit surprised the powerful London Knights by scoring the winning goal with 21 seconds left on Sunday night.
With four goals in five games, and his customary defensive efficiency, Owen Beck was named the tournament’s MVP.
This experience will be important for Beck’s development. But such an honor will not necessarily propel him to the ranks of NHL stars. He is still considered a possible third or fourth line player.
Moreover, consulting the list of MVP players at the Memorial Cup allows us to conclude this. Nathan MacKinnon, Leon Draisaitl and Mitch Marner enrich this list, but MacKinnon was 17, Draisaitl and Marner 19, not 20 like Beck.
William Dufour (2022), James Malatesta (2023), Joel Teasdale (2019) and Michael Chaput were 20 years old like Beck when they earned such an honor.