The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 275: Don't Call it a Rebuild, I Been Here for Years

Episode Date: January 28, 2019

Jonathan Willis joins the show to discuss the firing of Peter Chiarelli, the end to another sad chapter in the last decade plus of hockey in Edmonton, and how the Oilers go about fixing the mess he left behind. Topics include: 2:45 The Mikko Koskinen contract, and timeline of the firing 15:00 How Chiarelli's tenure compares to past Oilers GMs 25:30 Asset Management 101: The cautionary tale of Al Montoya 35:15 The search for a new GM 46:30 Big decisions ahead at the deadline and in free agency 57:00 How we would go about fixing things Sponsoring today’s show is SeatGeek, which is making it easier than ever before to buy and sell sports and concert tickets. They’re giving our listeners a $10 rebate off of their first purchase. All you have to do is download the free SeatGeek app and enter the promo code PDO to get started. A reminder that we’re hosting a daily fantasy listener league contest over at FanDuel every Thursday this season. While you wait for the next opportunity to play to come around, go over to fanduel.com/PDO and tell them we’ve sent you. They’ll hook you up with a bonus $5 to play with after your first deposit, which will surely come in handy throughout the year. See you there! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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Welcome to the HockeyedocatioCast. My name is Dimitri Philopovich. And joining me as our resident Oilers correspondent, but also... most importantly, a PDO cast Mount Rushmore occupant. It's my good buddy Jonathan, what's going on, man? Ooh, we're at Mount Rushmore. Oh, for sure. I mean, what are we at?

We must be at double-digit appearances right now, right? Like, I feel like it's yourself and Andrew Berkshire are probably pacing the way in terms of most common guests. And probably the shows I enjoy doing the most. I feel like we've got a good chemistry right now. We've got a good rapport. We kind of know the tones we want to hit. I feel like, you know, you're checking all the boxes. Well, you know, I love doing this.

It's always fun because we just kind of talk about whatever we're going to talk about. And I guess today we have some actual news. And yeah, it's going to be fun. Well, it's amazing because the season has flown by a little bit. And it's been an exciting one for sure. And there's been a lot of news. But I hadn't realized that I hadn't really even had you on the show since before the years started. The last time you were on, we were dissecting the Eric Carlson trade and the Max Patch Ready trades.

And that was all the way back in September before the regular season even got going. So it's been a while. And as you alluded to, for anyone that somehow, has been like living in a cave or something and the first thing they're doing upon return uh the civilization is listening to the pediocast i thank you for that but um otherwise everyone likely knows already by now that um you know the oilers have uh relieved peter shirelli of his duties and are conducting yet another um in a long list of GM searches and um we're going to get into all that i think there's plenty of different ways we can unpack it i think okay first off here

Here's one preface. We're recording this on Friday morning, and I think we're probably even going to save it until Monday morning, just because it is the all-star break. And I kind of want to let this breathe a little bit and give people a bit of a break from digesting this sort of content. So hopefully in the meantime, there's no new breaking news or revelatory stuff or a hiring that takes place, but I think we're going to be pretty good. So, Jonathan, I have two scenarios for you. And I honestly, for the life of me, I was thinking about this, and I couldn't decide which I would consider to be more alarming if it really was the case. And we don't know how it would fully transpired or what the real answer was.

So that's why it's a bit of this mystery. And I'll let you pick which one would be more alarming if you were an Oilers fan and this was the truth. One. Okay. They let Peter Shirley handle a Miko Koskin and extension in somewhat bad faith, knowing full well that he was out the door eventually, or really soon I should say. And for whatever reason, that negotiation doesn't go his plan. They wind up saddled with this three-year, 4.5 million per contract with Miko Koskinan.

It gets publicly ridiculed online and pretty much in every knuck and cranny of the hockey universe. And it's one final part and get from Peter Schrelli. Or option two, Shirelli's the GM. He's just doing his day-to-day job. It's business as normal. He signs Koskin into a three-year contract because he believes genuinely in his heart to heart that Miko Koskenen is the future goalie of Edmonton Oilers, at least for the next three years. and this is a good value to get a guy while we can,

and now I'd let him hit the open market. And then the Oilers take the ice the following night, and after two periods of, albeit admittedly, listless hockey, the leadership group decides they've seen enough and kind of spontaneously and impulsively pulls the trigger and relieves Peter Schrolet of his duties and completely changes their plans from what they had been initially conceiving

as recently as 24 hours ago. Which of those is you think more likely, and which one do you think, would be more alarming? I think either of those scenarios as laid out would be extremely alarming. I'm not sure that either really captures what happened. They don't gel completely with the official story at any rate. And I think the official story is a little bit fishy,

so we can talk about that as well. For what it's worth, here's the way I see it going to. I think the Oilers Management Group, whoever you include in that, looked at the goalie market this summer and said, oh, you know, we're not going to get the Brovsky, and the rest of that market stinks. Now, I think that's a debatable point, but I can see how you look at it and go,

you know, I don't want Jimmy Howard, I don't want Semian Varlamov. I don't want to go with a 1A, 1B thing. Koskinin's what I'm going to roll with, especially if your starting point is mid-December. Because in mid-December, I believe he had a 930 save percentage, and, you know, everything just collapsed.

after that. He's got an 880 save percentage over his past 12 games. So I have to think that what happened was when they started this process, they were looking at his first 16 games or whatever it was and going, yeah, yeah, this is our guy, which is a whole other issue and a problem all by itself. So you start down this path and Peter Shirelli's negotiating it. And we know that because Sportsnet's Mark Specter reported it, that Shirelli was the point man on negotiations. And, and And so the team goes in the tank over this 12-game stretch, and you start having discussions about firing the GM, and you try to decide when to do it.

You see the 10-day break coming up, and you go, okay, that's the time to do it. But you know what? We're going to let him finish Koskenen because as a group, we feel that that's still a good decision. This is a two-old-deal-to-pass-up. We can't possibly risk it. Which is a whole other issue. But here's the wrinkle with that because if that's the story, and that to me is, that's how I interpret what's been presented officially, that's not that crazy beyond the Koskin and contract itself in deciding that's a good idea.

But the process itself isn't that crazy beyond that choice. But the wrinkle with it is that Nicholson says they decided before the Detroit game to fire Shirelli and they let him know at the second intermission. Now the issue with that, for those who didn't see the Detroit game or don't know what happened, it ended up 3-2, which doesn't look that bad. But Detroit was the last place team coming in. And at the midway point of the second period, the shots were 2011 for Detroit, and it was a 2-0 Detroit lead. And the Oilers were having the boots taken to them. And then the Oilers kind of pushed back and made it a little bit respectable. So the thing I just, I can't help wondering in the back of my mind is, did somebody get a text message midway through the second period?

of this terrible game against a terrible team coming off to miserable losses over the weekend saying, get that guy out of here now. And I can't rule that. I mean, I have no information that says that happened. That's just in the back of my head, I can't help wondering because the official idea that you fired him going into this 10-day break and you waited until the second intermission of the Detroit game, why not just do it the next morning if that's your plan? Why not do it before the Detroit game, if that's your plan. In no place in my mind does it make sense to me that you decide this coolly and logically and you do it mid-game?

Maybe there's a scenario where that makes sense, but I just can't wrap my head around it. Yeah. No, I love the, because obviously we'll never, I imagine there's a select few people that really do know the true unadulter timeline and the full sort of impetus and final straw behind this. And for us on the outside, we kind of need to piece it together and sort of do a little bit of detective work and try to, you know, use some critical thinking of our own.

But you're right. I mean, it does, the timing does seem a little bit fishy. And I don't necessarily want to re-litigate Peter Shirelli's tenure at Edmonton. I mean, we're going to get into some of the moves, obviously. But I think it's generally considered to have been a massive disappointment. And especially the way this year is gone, I mean, there are only a couple points out of a playoff spot. But it's clearly been a very underwhelming year that's resulted in a coach firing and a bunch of turmoil and all the same issues that have been going on for a while now, kind of resurfacing. So I understand from that point of view why this move would have made. And if anything, I think people are generally pretty surprised that it took this long and they were

as loyal to Peter Schrelli as they were for as long as they were. But yeah, I didn't ultimately see much reporting in the way of, maybe that's not how hockey reporting works these days, but not much speculation that, you know, oh, I'm hearing news that Peter Shirley could be on the way out. Like, it definitely, as that game was unraveling and the Oilers were just looking so helpless and everyone was just making fun of them online and losing at home and looking so poor to one of the worst teams in the league, then we kind of got Ryan Rashall come out and go, like, you know, I'm hearing that Peter Shirley's not long for this job. Like, it's not a matter of when, and it's a matter, and it's not a matter if it's a matter of when. and then Mark Spector saying there was a 40, 60 chance that even makes through the All-Star break.

And so then we kind of saw that process really expedited. But before that, I hadn't heard much other than, you know, snippets here. There are people really making fun of some of his moves. Yeah. So about a week, let's see, he was fired on, I don't know, seven or eight days before he was fired. I wrote a piece saying that the Oilers had to make a decision on Peter Shirelli at the All-Star break. And I laid out the case that his moves were so bad. and you don't want them handling these decisions at the trade deadline.

Koskinin was one of the things I had in my head when I wrote it. But when I wrote that, I hadn't seen anything else out there. And I wasn't writing it from a position of, oh, you know what, I hear that this is going to happen. I was just thinking, okay, you've got the 10-day break coming up. You're going to have your team meetings. If you're going to make the move, why not make it now, do an extensive search, et cetera. But I didn't really believe it was going to happen. And the week that followed, I saw there.

there was an increased amount of criticism of Shirelli in the media, and a lot of it from people, like, there's always been this rabid group of Oilers fans who's thinking I largely agree with who never bought into the Shirelli philosophy. So the people who are like, you know, the Griffin-Rinehart trades a firing offense, you know, two months after you got the job. But I, and that, they never bought in and they never stopped criticizing Shirelli's moves. But I do think that was a minority. And the shift in tone for me was in the media that was normally pretty quiet, not taking a stance one way or the other.

They started being increasingly critical that last week. And the out-of-town media, which has always been far more critical, ramped up their criticism. And even in the market, one of the little bellwethers for me was watching people who'd kind of said, oh, well, they had to make the Hall-Larsen move because they needed the defense and halls a locker room camp. yada, yada, yada, started transitioning from, that's not a bad move to. You know what? You're beating a dead horse. Everybody knows that's a bad move. Let's move on. And when that transition happens, I start, it's a bit of a bell weather for me. But having said all that, the news that he was actually going to get canned, it wasn't until basically that last day or two. Yeah. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of

sense. I mean, I'm just curious, you know, if you were in that ladder camp of people that initially were buying in, and when he came into him, and you thought he was the right man for the job, and you kept pointing to his, you know, his success and the Stanley, ultimately the Stanley Cup victory in Boston and sort of, you know, buying into this plan he made, and then when they made the playoffs, and there was a lot of, you know, chest thumping and congratulations and people going, oh, maybe some of the moves he made were the correct ones. And so if you were in that camp, then all of a sudden you change your mind. I'd be just very curious, like, what the final tipping point was and what the move that acted as the final straw was where you're like,

okay, this is a fireable offense. I've seen enough. I'd be very fascinated to know what that fine line was and where, what set people over the top because, you know, as bad as I ultimately think that me and cost can an extension is, I don't think it's necessarily like, you know, it's not going to kill a franchise by any means. It speaks to bigger issues and a lack of understanding about certain concepts and I think that's alarming for a GM more so than pointing at Mikokosk and then being like, okay, the Oilers are not going to be able to compete over the next three years because of this Albatross contract. I think those are two separate competing thoughts. Well, yeah, I think it's difficult to look back at it because we all are sort of tinged

by our own experience and remember what we remember rather than necessarily the whole picture. but I think there were a lot of people like when you watch the press conference after they trade hall for Larson I think it was pretty critical and I remember Spector in particular asking a question and I don't remember what the question was but it was something about you know losing value in a trade to make a move that needed to be made for the team and and the way it was asked I remember Shirelli kind of looking at him and going are you saying I lost the trade and before giving the rest of his answer so I think there was a lot of lot of criticism generally, but what happened was in 2016-17, everything went right and it was such a strong performance from a team that had never done it before that I think people who were on the fence kind of said, oh, well, you know what, I didn't come out strongly against this trade, so I'm not committed publicly, or, you know, I wasn't sure, you know, I didn't think it was right, but Peter Shirelli made it and I respect him, I respect his record in Boston and how good those Bruins teams were.

And maybe I was wrong. And so whatever doubts there were kind of got quashed that year, at least publicly. Yeah. You know, sometimes I think we can be definitely guilty of this on hockey Twitter, where there is, it can be an echo chamber and there is a lot of confirmation bias, right? Where it's like, depending on our initial view of the person making the move, if we like that, GM, we're going to view the move through this kind of like rosed into glasses and we're going to try to justify it, whereas if it's someone like Peter Shirelli who we like to publicly ridicule and

make fun of the moves or question the moves he's made, anything he does, even if it's ultimately a reasonable move, I think there's going to be a certain segment of people that are just going to make fun of it and use it as an excuse to bring back some of his past moves. But I think in this case, you know, I don't even think it's the benefit of hindsight. I think looking at the laundry list of missteps during his couple years in Edmonton, And it's just so extensive and so expansive that it ultimately is a really tough thing to overcome and save face from. And, you know, it's funny, I was in prepping for this podcast.

I was going through the archives and I was looking at some of the past 10 years before Peter Shirelli. And I highly recommend checking out the Oilers Wikipedia page for their GMs because clearly someone's gotten their hands on it and had a little fun with it. And in giving the synopsis of each GM's tenure. of the main accomplishments of it. And the Peter Schrelli one is particularly ruthless. But, you know, I was looking back at the, at the Tambalini one before that.

And what struck me was obviously the moves themselves aren't as glaring as signing Milan Luchich and trading Taylor Hall for Adam Larson or even the Eberleaf for Strom to Spooner to Waver, Fought, or downgrade. They're not as kind of blatantly, obviously, bad as that. but there's so many moves of this that I think he was the king of the subtly losing a seemingly throwaway deal where it was like trading Lubovir Shnowski for Ryan Whitney or just dumping guys like Riley Nash and Andrew Cogliano, you know, trading a relatively useful pick for Mark Fistrick, like Nick Schultz for Tom Gilbert, Patrick O'Sullivan for Eric Cole.

There's all these moves where it's like on the surface, none of them were as bad as anything Shirelli really did, but just the sheer volume. of them and how it ultimately took its toll. And if you combine that with the McTavish years, where, you know, they give up on guys like Dubnick and Gagne, finally, and Jeff Petrie especially, some of those moves, not to justify or defend Peter Charlie by any means, but it speaks to a larger issue with this older franchise in terms of how they've drafted, how they've developed, how they've managed their assets, and it ultimately kind of came to roost when you look at this team now.

And there's just not that much support around their best handful of players. and that's ultimately been there on doing, and that's a big reason why Peter Trelley himself was let go. Yes. I'm going to quibble just a little bit here. It's funny you mentioned Tamblini because I was, so one of my, my law, for those of you who don't know, I keep a record of Oilers interviews and trans, like just transcribed, which is running, I think, 150,000 words now and it goes back to midpoint at 2014. So one of the things I've tried to do over the years is when I have time, go back and add little bits. And so I've been rewatching. oil change. And for those who don't know, that's the, not propaganda exactly. It's actually really well done. It's a documentary about the Oilers rebuild, starting with Steve Tamblini. And it's presented in a fairly team-friendly way, but you get a remarkable amount of quotes. And so I was watching this the other day. And Steve Tamblini and his brain trust

are going into the 2010 off season, and they're talking about their priorities. And one of the big things is they've got to get an enforcer because they got all these young kids on the way. And you can't have these guys on their back and everybody's talking about it. And maybe you get five minutes of clips of them debating the merits of the relative enforcers and what they're going to do for them. And they're getting rid of Sheldon Surrey because he's a character problem. And they're going to bring in Curtis Foster and there's a clip of Pierre McGuire freaking out because Calgary's going to have a hard time matching that because Curtis Foster's got a boom-in shot.

He's a great person. And they're laughing in the room going, Okay, yeah, yay us. Look at the reviews. But I mentioned all this because character was one of the things that got harped on incessantly over the Steve Tamblini era. And character's one of those things that came up again in the Bob Nicholson Presser when Shirelli was let go. And it's sort of a recurring theme, oddly enough, not necessarily as much through Shirelli's tenure as through every other GM. It's an organizational bugaboo. And there's been so much emphasis. on it, that it's always an alarm bell when you hear it, because if this has been their priority all down the line and it's still a problem, either they're just terrible at assessing it and they should stop because they can't do it, or it's not really the issue. And, you know, pick your poison there. Well, I mean, listen to Bob Nicholson's comments and obviously there's only so much you can really glean from them. There's only so much that it makes sense for him to reveal anyways,

But I mean, just that idea that they were harping on needing to bring it more character and more leadership to surround like David with. Like, ultimately on the surface, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Like, yeah, you prioritize having good character over bad character and having leadership is great. I mean, a lot of the best teams in the world have a ton of leadership. But it's like when you're prioritizing that over actual skill or contributions on the ice and looking over certain other characteristics just because a guy is a good guy. that's how you have some of the issues the others have had. And no, you're right. I mean, that's why my other unanswerable question beyond the Miko Koskinin one and who handled

that extension and sort of why it was done the way it was done is how much does this leadership slash ownership group medal and how much of the issues that we saw during the Shirelli era will persist even with this new gym that GM they eventually bring into place unless it is a guy who comes in with enough gravitas where he can basically push them to aside and just do whatever he wants. I mean, it's easy to make fun of Shirelli and everything he did wrong. And I think we can't make enough of the fact that they got Connor McDavid and haven't capitalized on that, especially throughout his entry-level contract.

But this stretch is well beyond that. I mean, you've got the one playoff appearance in the past 12 seasons. And that doesn't even include this year where they're probably missed it again. I mean, they've only had the one year and that was 2016-17. They made the playoffs where they had over 90 points. It's just, we're coming up on what, like 12, 13 years now. of sheer, nutter incompetence and underwhelming results. And so whenever you have that, it's not just one person to blame, I feel like.

Yeah. I guess the way I look at it, maybe it's just because I'm, when I was in the oil patch, way back when before I was a hockey writer, back when that was my hobby and oil patch was my work. Back when you're making an honest living. Back when I was making real money, actually. Yes. One of the things that I did was repaired various rental equipment.

And a lot of times it would come back from the field pretty beat up, a lot of problems with it. You'd run it through its paces, and you'd find a major problem, you'd fix it, and then it still wouldn't run. You'd find another major problem, and then you'd find another major problem. But they weren't connected. They were three or four different significant problems that you had to fix, but the causes were different. And I think that applies when you look at Edmonton because it's one thing to say, you know, we've got to get all these guys out of the way. But in a sense, they really have.

You know, you look at the Tamblini era. You look at the masthead of names on the management roles there. He cleared out a bunch of the low loyalists that were there before him. They brought Craig McTavish back. He brought Scott Housen back. He did a couple of other things. but McTavish only had a couple of years in the post and I'm not defending him because his record was not good

but the team Shirelli inherited was pretty well set up like you look at that team in even in 2015-16 like you've got Hall you've got Eberle Pouliot had 36 points in 55 games and then Peter Shirelli had just brought in Andre Sechre and Patrick Maroon and the Sechra thing went badly not really through any fault of his own

Justin Schultz was there. The development was bad, but he was there. And of course, I don't really blame Shirelli for how that went down for a bunch of reasons, mostly because Pittsburgh didn't actually qualify Justin Shultz. They were able to resign him later at a lower rate. That's not something Edmonton could have done. But by point in all of this is that when Shirelli came into the job, there's actually a pretty good supporting cast there.

And he augmented it outside of the Reinhardt deal, which was a disaster on so many levels. but he augmented it at first year. I think Shirelli really had the table set for him by both the McDavid Draft and the team that Craig McTavish left him with a few salary cap problems like Andrew Farrants and Mark Fane and those sorts of things. But I think the table was set, and the failures of the Shirelli era really do come on Shirelli. Kevin Lowe has been on the business side basically since Shirelli came in.

Craig McTavish is there. but he got demoted, he got sidelined. His guys were railroaded, sent to the minors. Basically, his work was all undone. So I can't look at that and say, oh boy, Craig McTavish sure is pulling the strings there. Scott Housen actually basically got sent home. He was still under contract.

He did pro scouting for them. He was in an advisory role. And when he got brought back, it wasn't in anything really beyond a player development role. So he's liaising with their minor league talent. So when people say, you know, It has to go beyond the GM. It does.

It does. The organization is flawed and has been flawed for a decade. But when they brought Bob Nicholson in, he did his forensic audit. He got a year. They made him the CEO. They gave him the power. He brought in Peter Shirelli. They made him the GM and the president.

They gave him the power. The failures post-2015 are on Peter Shirelli. And to a lesser extent, the cast surrounding him, particularly if you're looking at the Reinhardt trade. And Bob Nicholson. I just, when Nicholson says there's something in the water, I kind of, I shake my head a little because, no, no, the failures of the past were real failures and a real problem, but they're distinct from the failures of the Sherrelli regime. And I don't see a common link between them beyond the fact that Kevin Lowe is still employed by the organization in some capacity. And I don't think that's credible. Yeah.

You know what? The one move that really sticks on a crowd, and obviously there is much more impactful. and severe moves that you can charge to Peter Shirley's resume. But the Al Montoya saga, I don't know why, but that one just bugs me so much just from a pure asset management perspective because it just speaks to like a lack of, I guess, attention to detail or embrace of small but valuable assets in the sense that they're going through this shaky season. And Cam Talbot clearly can't hold up to the workload that he had the year prior when he

been so amazing for them. And so they go out and Lauren Bross Straw was struggling at the time and they go out and they bring in Almond Toya, who's a proven backup and that's all well and good and they give up a conditional fifth round pick for him. But then, you know, the season's lost. They realize they're not going to make the playoffs. And instead of just cutting their losses and saying, okay, we're going to give up this fifth round pick. It is what it is. You know, it was a, I guess a bad bet on our part. They play him for that seventh game and that contract kicks in where they all of a sudden have to make He had a fourth round pick. And I believe that happened on like March 18th or something of last year during a season when at that point,

there was absolutely no reason to be playing out Montoya because they were already out of it. And it just, and then, you know, obviously that kind of helps push and his own play in Emmington certainly didn't help his cause, but it helped push Lauren Broseau out of door. And now he's become this dominant backup in Winnipeg. And, you know, no one could have really foreseen that coming other than the fact that they've clearly, I don't know, put him in a position as a Cedar. He's playing with a great team in front of him. and it's a different circumstance, but just you put all that together,

and it was just like this one little instance of like, it was just such an unnecessary little thing. And it just drives me crazy when GMs do that in here in Vancouver, Jim Penning has done that all the time. And just sort of this lack of acknowledgement that picks like a fourth or fifth or a sixth round pick matter in the grand scheme of things and just throwing them away. Let's like, when you're a team that has struggled to draft and develop quality, volume of guys in the later rounds,

you should be hoarding those picks and increasing your odds of doing so as opposed to just casting them to decide because they don't matter seemingly. Was it you who was laughing the other day at the the Jamie Ben trade that Peter Shirelli made? Oh my God. So, and this is also like, it's unfair to Sherelli because obviously some of these picks, like I think the Griffin-Rinehart trade where they gave up a first and that first round of, you, Maddie Bersall?

Yeah, that's a totally different story. Like that is like, I've had Oilers fans and Peter Schroly apologists come back at me and go, who's to say the Oilers would have even taken, Mark Bezell? And it's like, okay, well, if they wouldn't have, then that speaks to an also bigger problem because he was very... Look, we're bad at drafting anyway, Dimitri. We can't keep the first.

Yeah, it's like, there isn't like a guy who like, you know, the islanders picked out of nowhere. Like, everyone knew him. He had, if anything, he'd fallen down the draft. And it was pretty clear that,

you know, at that point he was an incredible value. And it's like, if your team wasn't going to take him and they were going to take someone worse instead, I don't understand how that's a defense of the, the management group. But I think that's an example of its own.

But then if you look at Peter Schrelli's resume, especially back in Boston, there's so many moves where, he wound up trading picks that wound up being awesome players. Like I believe when he traded for Thomas Cabberley, that pick wound up being Ricard Raquel. He traded for Adam McQuade and that pick wound up being Jamie Ben and so on and so forth. There's so many, like, if you just look at,

and this speaks to the fact that Shirelli's been in the game and managing teams for as long as he has, and when you had the good fortune of doing so, you're clearly going to have a lot of talent coming into and out of your roster, hopefully. But his trade tree is remarkable because there has been so, much freaking superstar talent that could have conceived who'd been on Peter Shirelli teams that wound up being traded for basically what amounted to the spare parts. Yeah, it's, uh, there's a, there's a joke. Um, I think Cam Thompson, who used to write for Reverend Euler fans, uh, came up, mentioned it. He talks about the Peter Shrelly Forward Academy, which is, you know, Phil Castle and

Blake Wheeler and Taylor Hall and all these guys. But I wanted to focus in on the, the Jamie Ben thing, because it's a good example. of how these little moves get you. So there's nothing wrong with trading a fifth round pick for a serviceable NHL defenseman in Adam McQuade. That was a totally reasonable trade, and there's no reason at all to get upset that, you know, Jamie Ben was ultimately selected with the fifth round pick that went that way.

But it speaks to what fifth round picks and assets of that nature are. They're lottery tickets. And if you treat them like they're garbage, because a lot of the times they come up empty. Eventually you get burned. And that's not an example of that. But you mentioned Montoya. That's a good example of that.

The Alex Petrovic trade with Florida, that's a good example of that. Sorry, the Chris Widman trade with Ottawa. That's arguably a good example of that. Although, you know, maybe there's a case there. But the point is you have to value all your assets. All this stuff at the margin matters. And attention to detail is one of those things that drives you nuts. because these guys are making massive money,

and they have, you know, whole front offices that do nothing but sit down and talk and think and plan hockey and watch hockey. And the fact that they're making these little nothing moves, and they're so dumb on the surface is maddening. My example from the Shirelli era that kills me is the Eric Grab-A buyout. Like, the guy makes $900,000. That's an entirely variable American League contrast. Now it's a $300,000 cap hit for two years because they bought him out to save $300 grand.

And from a financial perspective, either they're really nickel and dime in it or somebody wanted to, what's been suggested to me at some point is, well, they wanted to give Griba a chance to go spread his wings because he's a good guy. And then at the other end, well, they didn't want Griba and the miners around their kids. That's a bad apple. And I don't care which of those three explanations you use. They're all dumb. You don't add cap hit for no reason when you're desperate for every penny. It's this bleeding at the edges is just the kind of thing that makes you go,

why am I paying that executive a seven-figure salary? Yeah, I mean, money's clearly tight in Edmonton. I mean, you know, they only had $42 million to give the million Luchin and another 16 of Chris Russell. I mean, it's when you're devoting vital resources to that. I mean, there's no room for Eric Ryeb, 9000 or whatever. Both character ads, I would point out to. Oh, for sure. No, this is a team overflowing with character.

I know. It's gone on so far. When you look at the worst contracts in Edmonton's recent past, usually there are guys that were added for their character and leadership, among other things. But, I mean, Russell's a guy who teammates clearly love them and always gets cited for good character. I have no reason to argue with that.

Luchich is a guy who Peter Shirelli saw for years and years in Boston has always praised his character. He comes across, you know, I don't have any way of judge this. I'm not in there, but in his interviews, he comes across as a real character guy. I think Andrew Ferrence is somebody who's regarded by most people. I mean, maybe not so much in Edmonton now in the Edmonton fan base, but generally speaking, regarded as a good character individual. And it just goes back to when you're emphasizing that, maybe make sure the hockey stuff's button down to. Yeah, Jonathan, when we finish recording, please remind me to message the evolving wild guys to add a variable for a character in their goals above replacement metric. Well, I feel like that's what goals above replacement has really been missing is a character variable. It's true. It's hard to take it seriously until we have that accounted for.

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With that out of the way, let's get back to Jonathan Willis and the Hockey-Pedio cast. Okay, so I know you've written about this, and I want to get on it to kind of unpack it and get into it here, and it's sort of the pros and cons of, you know, rushing to make a move and pick a new GM now versus waiting until the summer, and also just the general concept of

the blueprint and sort of how you go about fixing this. And if you are the new person coming in to Edmonton to take tasked with, you know, cleaning up the mess shirelli left and making a contender out of this and capitalizing on having Connor McDavid on your roster, what moves you would go about prioritizing and how you would go about fixing this mess. So let's kind of unpack those one by one. And I guess let's start with the concept of picking the GM and sort of what you're looking for and the timeline for it because obviously, you know, I imagine there's

going to be, I think they're probably going to wait until the summer, right? Like you open the door for a bigger pool of candidates and you really give yourself more time to get a better sense of how the market's shaping up and also how to best delicately take those next steps. Yeah, I don't know that they'll necessarily wait till the summer. I think it's going to depend on who they're allowed to talk to and what they're allowed to do. But obviously you start the search right away and you let it take as long as it takes. I think that's the big thing.

And I think that's something that Bob Nicholson stressed in his availability. And he seems sincere to me. I think he knows that, that he wants to take his time and get this right. What I'm looking for, and to me it goes beyond just the thing. the GM, you want to set up a certain kind of front office because the fact is no one person knows everything that needs to be known. You need a strong group and you need varied backgrounds. So I look at Tampa Bay, for example, Tampa Bay brought in a director of statistical analysis

from outside hockey. When Steve Eiserman set that up, he poached Julianne Brisewa, who was at the time one of the top young executives, non-traditional hockey background. but doing good work with Montreal's farm team brought him in. He brought in, he kept some people from the Tampa Bay staff he inherited, not many, but a handful. Brought in Al Murray, who was incredibly respected as a director of scouting. Longtime King Scout, he was in sort of a mini exile with Hockey Canada,

but he brought him back to Tampa. And what he did was he constructed a front office with a bunch of different viewpoints. And then he was capable of synthesizing that information. You look at what happened in Toronto. very similar things happen in Toronto with the management set up there. And that's to me what you have to look for is you have to find somebody in the GM position who is not going to be, who's going to be more of a consensus builder than a unilateral decision maker. And you have to surround him with top end people.

You have to invest heavily in analytics. It's not the only thing you have to do, but you have to do that. And I mean, people will say, well, the Oilers use analytics. And they do. But you have to invest in people who know what they mean. You can't have the GM walk. out and giving press conferences where he lists off Nick Cronwall and Chris Russell is the two best outlet passers in the NHL because when you're doing that, you don't understand what the numbers

are telling you. So you have to invest in that department, but you also have to have just good traditional assessment methods. Your scouting director's got to be somebody who knows what they're doing. Your pro scouts have to be people who know what they're doing. You have to have bright minds with different backgrounds who can give you different things, and then you have to listen to them all. One of the things with the 80s Oilers, I actually think there's.

some decent hockey minds in that group. I'm going to get treaded for this. But you look at Kevin Lowe's track record as GM. It's mixed. It's really not that bad. But the problem is when you have four guys who are on the 1980s Oilers and they all come with that mindset, no matter how open-minded they are, that's a lot of redundancy in one line of thinking. So to me, that's what it comes down to. You want to find somebody who's a consensus builder, open to different viewpoints and has to surround him with good people, him or her with good people. Yes. I would say the first criteria should be expanding your search beyond looking for someone who either used to play for the Oilers was related to someone who played for the Oilers or is close with someone who played for the

Oilers. I think, well, you look at the names that have popped up though. I mean, it's guys like Mark Hunter, it's guys like Kelly McCrimmon, it's guys like Lawrence Gilman and Mike Gillis. So I think that is something, if these names are more than just, you know, that media person's contact list, if those names are based on sort of what the thinking is inside the office, I think that's something they understand. Yeah, you mentioned a lot of interesting names there, and I think they're all viable candidates and would be upgrades, to be honest. I mean, even Elliot Freeman in his 31 thoughts throughout the potential of Ron Hextall, and I'm not sure, you know, both personally, whether he would want to take more time off after having recently been like overm the flyers or whether

that makes sense just because he has been in his one, I guess, example of taking on a job like that. He's been very sort of passive and patient. And that's, that would be. That would be a lot of, That's how we describe Ron Hextall passive impatience. I don't want to interrupt. I just have to tell this story. Back in my oil patch days again when I was doing this as a hobby, I wrote a piece which had Hextall is one of the next good front office guys to watch. And my boss's boss called me up the next day.

And he said, John, what are you doing? Hextall's a hot head. He's an idiot. You can't hire him to be a GM. That's a dumb piece. You're bad at this. Just stick to selling oil. field chemical.

Anyway, sorry. That's awesome. That's awesome. And it's true. I mean, until we saw him run the job, there would have been no reason to believe that he would be that way, but he certainly was. And I'm not sure if that's a, you know, a lasting character trait of his is the GM now all a sudden or whether it was just because of the circumstance he was in.

But that's an interesting name to consider as well. And obviously, near and dear to my heart is the combination, the one-two punch of Mike Gillis and Lawrence Gilman. And I am chomping at the bit to see them get another chance. I mean, obviously Lawrence is, I'm sure, enjoying his time with the Leafs organization and running the Marley's right now and doing great things there. And I've been on the record and on this podcast talking many times, seeing his praises and Gillis himself as well.

I know towards the end of his time in Vancouver, there was some bridges burned and there was some bad feelings around the league. But I think enough time has passed. And if anything, I'm not sure how history outside. of, or how the general perception outside of Vancouver is in terms of now that enough times past how you view that regime and that era of the Canucks. But it's pretty clear, having covered that team very closely, that, you know, himself and Lawrence Gilman were definitely on the cutting edge of exploring a lot of this stuff that now

we're kind of taking for granted a little bit. And they were kind of pushing the envelope and really trying to find new creative ways to make the Canucks better and exploit all of those little market inefficiencies. And, you know, the league's caught up a little bit. But, I'd be very fascinated to see sort of what they did next to try and keep that going and try and find you creative ways to get better now that the league has started looking at stuff like Zone Starts and sports science and all this stuff which back in like 2010 was considered to be niche. So this is audio so people don't know this. But my screen on my computer right now, when Demetri mentioned Gillison Gilman is just the Jack Nicholson Anger Management Giff where he's nodding. I think that would be great. I like the record.

Gilman's an interesting guy for Edmonton specifically because, of course, he did a stint with the then-Fenix coyotes when Wayne Gretzky and Keith Gretzky were involved there. So there's perhaps a bit of an in-house knowledge of him that might make it an easier fit. And Gilman is also by trade a numbers guy. Not in terms of analytics. I mean, he's open to it, but in terms of purely like, purely like. being a cap guy and yeah and sort of massaging that cap wisely and really trying to squeeze every single ounce of value out of every single penny they're spending and being creative in that regard and I think especially after the Shirelli regime bringing someone in who would actually be looking at

that sort of stuff and trying to maximize value and figuring out ways how to best optimize the roster around a couple of highly paid guys like Connor McDavid and Leandro Seidel. That would be a fascinating approach to take because it would be so divergent. from what we've seen from them over the past couple years. Well, I've always really respected the job that Gillis did in Vancouver. And of course, Gilman had a regular radio slot for a bit there before he landed in Toronto. And I've never spoken to Lawrence Gilman. I don't know him from Adam, but his listening to the, I really respect his, the way he thinks about hockey.

And I think he'd be an extremely, I thought Toronto was extremely smart to Adam in an assistant GM role. he's a guy I'd have no qualms about really, really considering for a main GM role. And the other thing I want to add in here, because I think it gets talked about a lot and probably gets talked about too much. And I don't care what the league perception of the guy is. Like, yeah, Mike Gillis, if I was a GM in the league, if I was Buffalo's GM when they made the Cody Hodgson, Zach Cassian trade, I'd have been livid at the way Gillis was up there strutting about his pump and dump with Cody Hodgson.

But you know what? If you're hiring a GM, who cares? You don't have to get along with these guys. You just have to do business with them. You know who has a great relationship with other NHL GMs? Peter Shirelli. And we know that because Bob Nicholson said it last April as part of the reason he was keeping him around.

And I don't actually know if Bob Nicholson's the right guy to make this hire because of his long hockey Canada experience, this is a guy who spent his entire professional life mingling with the hockey establishment. So I'd be concerned he'd have an establishment view. But if you're hiring a GM, who cares? There aren't that many people out there. You're going to do business with. who you have to do business with, you don't all have to be friendly and chummy.

And you know what? If the hockey world was a bit less chummy, I think we'd see teams do colder, better decision-making. Offer sheets. Offer sheets. Yes, but you know what? You team me up there, and I can't let it slide. You're so right, Jonathan. Other GMs love Peter Shirelli.

They love dealing with them. They love calling with him. They love calling them. They love making trades. Peter Sherell has got a great rapport around the league. I mean, he's made a lot of GMs around the league. look a lot better than they are just by dealing with him. So you're right.

I'm very curious because, you know, when we're talking about picking the GM now versus waiting until the summer, generally, I would say at least having a viable sort of bridge option or interim thinker that is going to align with what the person coming in in a handful of months is going to want to do would make a lot of sense. Obviously, if you don't know the specifics, it's hard to do that. but I think just generally speaking, like, you don't want to just throw away the next couple months of a season just because you're going to wait and kind of push the ball down until the summer. But at the same time with this Oilers team, I mean, you know, they've got Alex Chassan and Camtale, I guess, as the two, although the latter is value plummeting by the day, but two guys that are veteran players who are expiring contracts who would make sense to trade away for future assets and then sort of figuring out the Blue Arby's situation in terms of figuring out what you really have with him and how you want to

proceed the summer when he's up for an RFA contract. And it, I mean, obviously it seems like a bridge is going to happen there, but just in terms of how will you think of him and how you value him as a player and putting him in a position to succeed over the next couple months, like those are sort of the big questions that face the next GM that are very pressing right now. But in the grand scheme of things, those are pretty small compared to a lot of other instances where you'd, you know, you'd have five or six different questions that needed. immediate resolving and maybe there'd be a stronger impetus or stronger push to bring in a

long-term GM right away so they can handle them as opposed to what's going on in Edmonton right now. Yeah. I think the pressure point for Edmonton is the draft. I was listening to a Brian Burke interview the other day where he said you don't need to have a GM in place for the draft. Your scouts can handle the draft. And I think that's true, but I also think that the draft floor is where a lot of the trades happen and the Oilers are going to have to make a significant trade or two to augment their forward depth if they're defense depth, they can do it, but they're forward supporting cast specifically.

Going into the trade deadline, I don't think it's that hard to get it right. I don't think they're going to trade Alex Chason. They're still looking at the playoffs. And I'm fine with that, honestly, because what are you going to get a third round pick? Well, I mean, at this point, I would love that over Alex Chason, if we're honest. No, it's true. And this is the whole bleeding small assets thing. but I think they're going to keep them.

To me, whatever. But I don't love it, but whatever. And you know what? There's also value. I hate to do this because it goes against my brand. But I do think there's value in not throwing in the towel and saying, you know what, we're not doing a rebuild, a mini rebuild, a retool, any of that. We're going to keep trying to win games.

Do you hear yourself, though, you know, I know, throwing, trading Alex Chassan for a third-round pick is Tanamo? to throwing in the towel for the season. If you are in that position as an organization, you need to question how you got there, but also you need to critically think, okay, if Alex Chassan is a difference maker here, maybe we're not a contender. But here's the actual Alex Cheson question to me. It's don't sign him to a long-term contract when he's nearing 30 and shooting 27% this year. That, to me, is the danger point.

Well, so then why are you keeping him for an extended playoff on this? season? Is that the rationale? No, no, they just want to squeak into the playoffs. I think that's the entire hockey operation school for this current season is to squeak into the playoffs and have a little bit of opening around money and all the character and development arguments in favor of thank you. Well, I guess when you made it once in 12 years, it's, that's just it is it's been so negative that I really feel there's a belief within the organization that, you know,

have to try and do something good on the ice, whatever that is. And the Western Conference is such a disaster this year that I kind of shrug my shoulders and go, I get that. It's not ideal from a long-term asset management perspective, but I don't think it's so damaging. I think the perception of the team is generally in the level of toxicity around the team, it might be worth it to just try and not be. And you know what? The thing that makes it easier, they can't really be big sellers anyway. Like, I think, what are you going to get for Camtelb? I was thinking about Camtelbett trades the other day, and I'm going, well, if they retain

money, maybe they could flip them to Philly for Michael Raffle. Like, he's not a guy who's going to have a ton of value. I think all they have to do in the meantime is just tinker around the edges. It wouldn't bother me at all if they were to trade, say, a third round pick or a second-tier prospect for a middle-six free agent rental. who they are thinking about signing next year. Like that's the kind of thing I think they can do where they're not,

they're still being like, yep, we're going to try and make the playoffs, but we're not going to spend anything of real significance to do it. Yeah. I mean, it's tough because as you mentioned, you know, they're only, I believe,

three points out of a wild cards bar right now. They'd have to. They'd have to leap frog four teams. And with the loser point, I think that's a bigger issue than the actual points themselves. It's just like every night, regardless of how well you're doing,

it's so tough. this point of the season to make up tangible ground, but you're right. I mean, the Western conferences, I mean, I think it's got some good teams, but obviously the fact that we're talking at the bottom end of it that a team like Edmonton could sneak in speaks to the lack of depth. And I don't know, I just look at the overall package and, you know, the 25th and point percentage, they've got a minus 19 goal differential. They're 24th in shot share and 23rd and expected goals. And that's conveniently enough, both at 5 on 5 and overall. And it's, It's a team that pretty much any way you slice and dice it is a bottom, I don't know, 10 team.

And it's such a shame because, you know, they have 139 goals as a team. And McDavid's factored into 51.8% of them. And he's directly created by a primary point 43% of them, which is something that we've never really seen. It's insane. In the modern, I guess, 2006 on analytics era. And so it's, it's tough because when you have Carter McDavid, sneaking into the playoffs, at least you have like a puncher's chance

that he's just going to go absolutely supernova and single-handedly carry you to at least a couple victories. And who knows, maybe Miko Goskin and Rakam Talbot gets reinvigorated and gets hot and all of a sudden you have got a first-iron upset, especially I imagine against the team like Calgary

in a Battle of Alberta, that would be a very tantalizing thought. But at the same time, it's like, I don't know. If Alex Chassan is the difference maker here, I think you have bigger fish to fry and I would just, it's easy for me to say, but I would kind of look ahead and try to, you know, maybe lose this battle, but try to win the war in the years to come. So the thing about the Western Wildcard race, there's about seven teams there that I have very little regard for, but two of them are going to make it. Yeah.

And, you know, who's to say, Edmond's, like, maybe it'll be Anaheim, maybe it'll be Vancouver. Those are not exactly powerhouses. Well, the insane thing is there's a very real case to be made that Edmonton is the most talented team out of all of those. That's exactly it. I look at it and I go, why not Edmonton? And then I just think about, like, we were talking, you were talking earlier about how, you know, there's some larger problem in Edmonton beyond Peter Shirelli. And I argued with you, but I think that your perception is 100% the perception around the league and within the market. And not that a playoff appearance is going to fix that,

but I think if they can have a decent 30-game run here, it will do a lot to sort of quell the negativity and buy them a little bit of time as they try and rebuild this team around McDavid. And I mean, yeah, they've got a minus 19 goal differential. They're not a very good team. Anaheim's one point out. They've got a minus 33 goal differential. It's just, it's such a mess,

and the cost is so low. And beyond that, I don't think it matters what you want to do as a GM. I think the ownership has decided what's going to happen with this team. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I'm of two minds, obviously. You're right. I imagine there's such a sour taste in the mouth right now that you would want to do anything to try and, you know, just carmically change, change the direction. I think it's at the same time.

I'm not sure, like, potentially just getting absolutely destroyed in a four-game sweep by Winnipeg or whatever in round one. I'm not sure if that's the best way to go into the summer as well, right? Like, it's like, I don't know. It's better than having the one playoff appearance in 13 years as the tagline, right? Yeah, maybe. It's still not a good way to go. But I think what Edmonton has in its favor, like, their whole swoon that got Peter Sherelli fired started when Oscar Clefbaum got hurt.

Also, when Chris Russell got hurt. Which of those are the more valuable ones? Yes, yes, exactly. There's no way to prove it. But the thing is, you have clefbaum come back after the break. Is it really that inconceivable, the state of the Western conference? You get cleft bomb back, maybe you trade a, I don't know, say you trade a third round pick for Richard Panic. And Richard Panic is not, you know, anything all that special.

But all of a sudden, maybe that gives you the opportunity to run a first and a second line. Because when you look at who the winger's have been on those first and second lines, they're awful. I don't think you need good, great wingers to make a McDavid line and a dry-sidal line work, but you do need competent wingers, and the Oilers haven't had that. Like, well, there you go. Ryan Spooner and Ty Rattie both cleared waivers on Monday, I think it was, and those guys were both in the top six for decent chunks of this season. But anyway, my point is you bring in one competent top nine player for not much.

Maybe you grab a reclamation project of your third line, at a minimal cost and you try and get Talbot up to make that neutral. No, no, Demetri, bad Demetri. But you do that, you have Clefbaum come back. And in the state of the West, I think you've got a puncher's chance. Maybe it's one chance in three you make the playoffs. It's not great. But I think that's the ownership, what ownership is going to dictate.

And I honestly can't say it's the wrong course of action. Yeah, no, I agree. And I agree there is a bunch of chance. But, man, I hope Richard Panic and Alex Chassan send you some sort of a care package or something, because no one has ever extolled their virtues like this in a podcast before. I mean, my goodness. Compared to Tyratty and Ryan Spooner, my friend, they are. Yeah, geez, things are bleak.

Well, we didn't really get into, like, let's fantasy book this a little bit. Like, let's put ourselves in the shoes. Let's say, you know, forget Mike Gillis and Lawrence Gilman. Let's say we get a call from Bob Nicholson. they want a one-two punch, a one-two ticket of Jonathan Willis and Demetri Filipovich running the Oilers. What are we doing? How are we approaching this summer? Let's forget this year.

Let's say whatever. They make the playoffs and they lose in five games in round one to Winnipeg. And no substantial moves have been made. So you're approaching this summer. You basically have this roster that's in place right now. What are the moves you're making to ensure that we're not having the same discussion again next year? it's like all McDavid's generating 40 to 50% of the goals and he has no help. And for the love of God, I cannot have another heart trophy conversation again.

It seems like we're about to have it. But I don't, so what are we going to do to prevent that history from repeating itself? Okay. So I think they need three top nine forwards. Maybe Pili A.RV is one of those. I mean, ultimately, they're going to need more. But I think three is the number you're looking at this summer. If one of those is Pliya-R-Vy, which is a maybe, you still have to find two others.

And they can actually clear a little bit of money. I think you're probably buying out Andre Sechra or sending him to Robedaah Island. I think you're probably buying out Milan Lucchich. And that clears, I think, $6 million. You're going to bury Spooner, you're going to bury Brandon Manning. Don't buy those out because you don't want the long-term pain. They've got one year to go. You're just going to eat it for a year.

and replace them with League Minimum guys. And to be honest, the guy I'd be looking at the most, I can't fathom that he's actually out there, but he keeps cropping up in trade rumors. The guy I'm looking at the most is Colton Perecoe in St. Louis. I don't, it boggles my mind that the rumors are there, and I don't know if they're true, and maybe they're not, and you'll get angry letters from St. Louis fans saying,

oh, Willis is dreaming in Technicolor. I'm just going with what's out there. I think you call up St. Louis and you say, okay, I'm going to send you Darnel Nurse, and I'm going to send you more than that. Tell me what more than that has to be, and let's talk about Colton Pereco. That's maybe a pie in the sky dream,

but I think that's what, that to me is the cornerstone move you make this summer, as you take Darnel Nurse, who's a good, useful player, it's not a bad thing to have that, but he's also, I think he's had a massive bump in points in scoring because he's on the power play. And I think when Clefbaum went down,

he showed pretty definitively that he's not ready to stay. step into a first pairing role, which means you don't want him as your number three because your number three defenseman has to be able to do that. So to me, that makes him a number four right now. I think he'll be more than that eventually, but probably just a number three eventually. So I think you try to trade him for a legitimate difference maker, somebody at that Colton-Pereco Hampus Lindholm level. Yeah, and I think at this point, I think the market is definitely there for him, right, just based on age, but also

well he's a good player he's a good player but he also has the benefit i think in terms of perception around the league if you look at his numbers just because he has been a bit of an accumulator this year just because he has been thrust into such a big role he's gotten such a high volume of minutes especially playing with the top guys on the power play that like i think his numbers look better than they would in an ideal circumstance if he was playing that second pairing role that yes that you were saying he's better suited for so i think like just in terms of as a trade asset I think this might be the time to jump and capitalize on that because I'm not sure on an healthy oilers team what his numbers will look like next year. Well, and the problem with the oilers, because I look at nurses age and I see the upside there.

But I look at the Oilers and they just don't have a lot of assets that can potentially bring back more than their actual cold, hard, ruthless, true, true talent level worth. and Nurse is one of those guys who might be able to do it both because of that and because of the physical element that he brings, which is still prioritized by GMs. And it's probably less prioritized by the one to Willis Filipovich general manager, general managerial monster. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and you've talked about this a bunch and I'm completely in lockstep with you that, like, this is a desirable gig because you already have the top upper echelon pieces in place with McDavid and generally. Seidel and Clefbaum and so on and so forth that if a smart GM comes in and makes a couple good crafty moves to either wisely shed some money or bring in some talent on the margins that can help supplement that.

All of a sudden, this is a team that could take off. And so it's a desirable situation, I think, assuming that you're going to, as a GM, have at least relatively full autonomous power and not constantly being, you know, meddled with. And so yeah, I'm bullish on this franchise, moving forward, just because of that. And when you have a guy like Connor McDavid, I'm going to bet on that talent winning out and eventually them finding the right recipe for it. But at the same time, like, it's this weird mix or balance where in the short, relative short term, I'm very bearish on it because I just kind of need to see them actually

start to put that plan into place for me to start buying into it because we've been burned so many times in the past. I don't think there's any question that all sorts of skepticism are warranted about who they're going to hire. They've got to get it right. And based on the track record, there isn't much reason to believe that they will. So that has to happen. But if that happens, I'm right with you. I'm very bullish on this team. And both for the reasons you said, having that elite core is the most important thing. But we've beat up on Peter Shirelli so much over this last hour. I think we should mention one thing that he did that I really respect, which was last summer, he didn't go all in on panic moves to try and make the team better immediately. I mean,

his hands were tied to some extent by things he'd done in the past, to be sure, so it's not like a blanket endorsement. But, I mean, he had the number 10 pick in Evan Bouchard, and he didn't trade that. And Bouchard's a legitimate blue chip prospect. They've got all, basically all their picks for the next three years. I think there's a fifth rounder missing or something. But basically, all their picks. They don't have another prospect of Bouchard's caliber, but they do have a decent collection of second-tier guys, you're Caleb Jones, your Ethan Bears, your Ryan McLeod's. And you look at the farm team in Bakersfield. The farm team in Bakersfield has been very good this year, and you look at the birthdays of their leading scores. They're all 20, 21,

22. So there are a lot of chips that are coming up. And if you're a GM taking this post and you're looking at, say, a three to five-year window in terms of where you're going to be assessed, you have the time to let some of these guys come up naturally and you, and because, well, there's so many right-shot defensemen, for instance, like next year they're going to have Bushard, they're going to have Joel Parrison, they're going to have Ethan Bear all pushing for a third pair, right, D-roll, and you can't break in all of those guys. So you have a little bit of trade currency. I mean, not like crazy high-end guys, but you have a little bit of trade currency in the present. So all you have to do is navigate in this immediate,

window and try and make good moves and boost the team here. And in the future, you should have young cost-controlled talent bubbled up, and you have young elite talent signed long-term as your core. So I think it's a very good situation to be in. Well, as we've seen with Maroon and with Chassan now, and the luxury of having great players like Connor McDavid is, I think every year you'll be able to, on the cheap, find guys who can come in and move up and down the lineup and contribute when they're playing on the top line and so you can save some money there as well. And that's why it's going to be very

crucial or vital that they don't wind up paying Alex Chassan this summer for the year he's had. And I guess that'll be a good test of where they're at and whether things have really changed and whether the person they bring in to run the ship is doing the right job because I think that's going to be a pretty good lemus test for a sort of an issue or a bump in the road that would have kind of plagued them in the past and maybe they can hopefully resolve and stop making that same mistake in the future. So I'm looking forward to it. I mean, it's obviously a situation with a lot of nuance. And whenever you're talking about a team with Connor McDavid, everyone's eyes are going to be peeled to it. And hopefully things are more optimistic in the years to come.

And Jonathan, plug some stuff. Let people know where they can find your work because you guys have been absolutely crushing it with all this coverage of everything that's been going on with oilers. And I want everyone to check it out if they haven't already. Thanks, Dimitri. I am at Jonathan Willis on Twitter. I am also a staff writer for the athletic. All my work is found there. And of course, we have Alan Mitchell and Tyler Delo and a lot of smart people writing at Pierre LeBron and Greg Kustin's. A lot of smart people writing about Edmonton right now.

So do check our workout on that site. Well, yeah, I highly recommend that. And Jonathan, keep fighting the good fight. I'm glad we finally got to do this. I know it's been a pretty busy week for you. So hopefully things die down here a little bit during the All-Sar break and you can rest up and recharge your battery. for what's going to be a spirited late season pushed by the Oilers once they acquired Richard Panic. I look forward to the Edmonton, Vancouver first round series against Calgary and Winnipeg.

I think that half of the first round being Canadian is going to be great. Can't wait. All right, chat, see, man. Take care. Cheers. The hockey pediocast of Dimitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on Twitter at Dim Philipovic and on social. SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockey pdocast.