I'm with you byz ... it's hard to think of what to do, exactly, it's such a mess. My kids, friends and I keep going round and round on this, with no real solutions to show for it. The team is such an anomaly, it's crazy. How can a team have the best penalty killing percentage on the road and the worst penalty killing in the history of hockey at home, at the same time!? How can a team go from being exciting and full of promise in the playoffs last year, to this dysfunctional pile of crap with basically the same roster, the only two noticeable exceptions being that Sekera was hurt, and Ebs is gone. But if memory serves, everyone in Oiler nation was trashing Ebs throughout the playoffs and it didn't seem like a big deal when he was traded for Strome.
But I keep going back to the overall talent and compete levels in the middle and bottom of the Oilers roster. I think you start from there, trying somehow to replace the 10 to 12 players who are really AHL calibre at best and trying to upgrade from the bottom up. These trades or roster moves may be easier to make seeing as we're talking 3rd and 4th line players. Move Maroon at the deadline for the best pick you can get, and start doing what the Oiler front office has historically been terrible at ... drafting well. We're seeing that incompetence now, especially when we open the cupboards and see that there's little there.
I guess the one consolation is that we've been freakin' awesome at winning draft lotteries, so let's hope we can pull that off one more time.
So, in terms of fixing the Oilers, all I can think of is trying to make minor deals to upgrade the bottom six forwards and bottom 4 D, trade Maroon for the best pick we can get, and try to win the lottery and get Dahlin in here. Sounds a lot like my retirement plan. I can't think of any other major deals that would help this team more than it would hurt it.
