Yeah, I agree. It's great to see Calgary and Winnipeg be relevant again and I look forward to the day that we can say the same thing about Edmonton. The Oilers' management has done a poor job of bringing in the right kind of talent IMO....too many players with similar skills and not enough complimentary and role players to make it work. It's s shame because there is a lot of talent on the roster but the sum of the parts don't seem to work well together. What's the attitude of the fans and media up there, Rod? Any hope for the future? Any rumors that the franchise might be considering relocation?
Relocation is not gonna happen. There is a new arena currently being built (and from the looks of it it will be truly state-of-the-art) and this is Edmonton. The people bleed copper and blue. The fans will never go away no matter how bad the team is and no matter how long they're bad for. But therein lies part of the problem. The fans are dissatisfied (to say the least), but the organization doesn't feel that the way they should because ticket sales and merchandise sales are a constant. The building sells out even when the team is out of the playoffs by mid-November (as they were again this season). Honestly, if the fans want to send the organization a message they should stop buying tickets until the product is worth the price. I have stopped watching the Oilers. I haven't been to a game this season and I don't watch them on TV. And I'm as die-hard a fan of the Oilers as there is. Part of why I've chosen to stop watching is to send that message, but it's also because it truly
hurts to watch this team play. There's no heart, no grit, no work ethic, no structure, and
NOBODY on the ice, behind the bench, or in management cares.
To put into perspective how dissatisfied Oilers fans are, there's an online campaign called "Kevin Lowe has to go" and tonnes of people have subscribed to it and it's raised money to produce bumper stickers and advertisements in the city saying "Kevin Lowe has to go." I'm one of the subscribers. Kevin Lowe has done an absolutely pitiful job throughout his years in the Oilers head office. He is terrible at it and he needs to go. But he's not the only problem (although I do believe that it starts at the top with him and the rest of management); we don't have a
SINGLE player on our active roster that
WE drafted later than the first round. Yeah, Eberle, Hall, and Nuge are good with the potential to be stars, but they were all first-round picks (with Hall and Nuge both being first overall). First-round picks aren't that hard (and first overall is even easier). That just goes to show how terrible our scouting is. Our GMs have all been bad and made terrible moves (including our current GM, Craig McTavish, whom I
LOVED as our coach years back). And then we haven't had good coaches with appropriate systems and it all trickles down to the guys on the ice.
This organization right now is breeding losers and fostering losing. The organization needs a
COMPLETE overhaul and it should start with management. But it should include scouts, coaches, and players too. No one should be untouchable. People often look at Pittsburgh and Chicago as examples of teams who built championships through the draft, and to a large extent that's true, and it's been expected that the Oilers would do that as well with all of our high draft picks, but not every draft has a Crosby/Malkin/Fleury or a Kane/Toews. It's not even anywhere close to a guarantee that a decade's worth of drafts will have even one guy like that, so you can't just rely on first overalls, you have to scout properly and find guys in later rounds or even undrafted guys (like Mark Giordano, Dan Boyle, Sergei Bobrovsky, Jonas Hiller, Tyler Johnson, Antti Niemi, Martin St. Louis, etc.). We haven't done that and the people who are in place right now aren't capable of doing it.
Anyway, that's my rant for now, but it's hard to really explain what it feels like to be an Oilers fan right now. On the rare occasions where I've caught part of a game or some highlights, seeing them play poorly, or lose, or get scored on just doesn't make me feel anything anymore. My feelings are dead... it's a terrible thing.
