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IanO said:
I'd say top 8, but certainly not top 4 (NYR, CAR, Win, Flo, Dal) and if you remove 29/97, a top 16 would be hard to achieve.
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I can listen to Florida, Dallas and Carolina, but I think the Oilers are better than the Stars overall.

The argument of "remove McDavid and Draisaitl and they would barely be a playoff team" is moot because... McDavid and Draisaitl are on the team. You could maybe make the argument they have a bigger impact on team success than other players, but that's just the nature of them both being top 5 players, playing on the same team. If you remove any team's best two players, they immediately become significantly worse. Take MacKinnon and Makar out of Colorado, take Matthews and Nylander out of Toronto, Barkov and Tkachuk out of Florida, Connor and Hellebuyck out of Winnipeg. This argument can be applied to literally any team.

Winnipeg is on an insane heater right now (though they got spanked in their last 2 games), they're clicking well and are definitely a good team. I was one of the people who was higher on them at the start of the year than most as I had them making the playoffs, which is more than a lot of people were predicting (not necessarily on this forum but in general). However, they are on a completely unsustainable trajectory, players like Scheiffele are shooting over 20%. Hellebuyck has a 0.926 sv% and has already played 14 games, they're doing what they've done over and over again without learning and are over playing him. He's going to inevitably get tired and tail off as he has pretty much every year in recent memory.

The Jets are good, but they're are not as good as the Oilers. It's big recency bias to put them ahead of the Oilers. Their scoring is unsustainable and they're overplaying their top goalie (who also has insane and probably unsustainable numbers), both of which are going to come back to haunt them later in the season and into the playoffs.

The Rangers are my second favorite team so believe me when I say they're not as good as they seem. They rely way too much on their powerplay and Shesterkin. 5-on-5 they're barely an above average team. Shesterkin is literally the only reason they've made it to the conference finals twice in the last 3 years. They got majorly outplayed by Carolina in pretty much every game in that series. Shesty is just a god tier goalie. When they came against an opponent that also had great goaltending (i.e. Florida) their mediocre even strength play resulted in a defeat in 6 games, in which the Rangers won 2 OT games, so not really decisive wins. Shesty is a part of the team, so much like the remove McDavid and Draisaitl argument I'm not going to say "if you take Shesterkin off the team they don't make the playoffs" because that is irrelevant, but goalies are far more prone to bouts of subpar play than skaters, so I think it's totally reasonable to say that if Shesty has an off night, the Rangers usually lose.

The Panthers are the defending champs, extremely well built from top to bottom and have great players at every position. They traded some of the offensive firepower the Oilers have for better goaltending. They are probably better on paper just because they have a bit more going on between the pipes and aren't exactly slouches offensively either. That being said the Oilers won 3 straight playoff games against them and pushed them to game 7 last year. I'd say Florida is better right now, but the margin is very thin, and they have also played a ton of hockey in the past few seasons and while the fatigue hasn't hit them yet, I would expect to see a bit of regression from them.

Carolina is also insanely well built, Andersen is a good goalie when healthy, they tend to struggle between the pipes when he's not healthy. The one regular season tilt between the Oilers and Canes this year was one of the closest games of the year so far. It was insanely competitive. With a healthy Andersen, the Canes are probably better but if they have to run one of their backups, the Oilers offense would likely be too much for them to handle.

Dallas is also very well built in general, but has some big time holes that I think put the Oilers ahead of them. Their defense is weak outside of Heiskanen. Lindell is a semi-decent 2 way top 4 guy and Harley is a good offensive D-man but the rest of that D-core is past their prime and wouldn't look out of place in the AHL. I can already hear the "Oilers are in the same boat" coming and that's just not true, Bouchard is an elite offensive defenseman (he needs to start getting some shots through on the pp though), definitely has his struggles in the defensive end but that's not what he's there for. Ekholm is an extremely good 2 way player and probably a top 20 d-man in his own right. The rest of the D-core isn't too remarkable (although Kulak is legit the best 3rd pairing D in the whole league and I've been saying this for years now, not just because of his recent success) but is certainly better than Lyubushkin, Smith and Dumba. Oettinger is a solid goalie, but really hasn't been elite since their first round series against Calgary a couple years ago. He's very inconsistent, and I think in a similar vein as Skinner, where he shows flashes of being really good and then gets mired in stretches of mediocre play. He's probably better and more reliable than Skinner, but it really would depend on day and which goalie decides to show up. The Oilers have the advantage at forward. I could hear the argument that Dallas might be deeper, but even that's debatable and the top end talent is very obviously an Edmonton advantage. For those reasons, I believe the Oilers are a better overall team, I could understand how someone might put Dallas ahead though.

A team that wasn't mentioned, but I think you could make an argument they're better than the Oilers is the Devils. Who have a stacked, young, fast forward core, a lanky and deep defense and solid goaltending. The Devils are a top team and I think can be put in the upper echelon along with Florida, Carolina and the Oilers.


That's not to say the Oilers can't get better though, they definitely need an upgrade at D, particularly the right side as they've had to run a lefty on that side for pretty much the whole year. Emberson started out weak but has steadily gotten better as the season has gone on. Stetcher is just fine, nothing spectacular but he gets the job done, I'd rather have him as a 7th D. Dermott is insanely mid, rarely does anything egregiously wrong but never really makes a big play either. If Nashville keeps struggling, Alexandre Carrier could be made available for trade and I think the Oilers should jump at that chance and try to make that happen for any reasonable price. I also agree with the general sentiment that they've lost speed up front with Holloway, McCleod and Foegele out and Skinner and Arvidsson added, they've definitely lost some of the breakneck speed of previous Oilers teams, which probably warrants a bit of a tactical adjustment from the coaching staff, or trying to bring in a little more speed either by trade or from the farm system. I loved Noah Philp when he was up and I believe the reason he was sent down is because Derek Ryan would need to clear waivers and Philp wouldn't as he's still on a two-way deal. This is a poor reason to keep the better player buried in the AHL in my opinion, find a way to make it happen. Savoie is super quick as well, and while I definitely understand why they are hesistant to bring him in, I think he would add a new dimension to the Oilers offense that they're missing right now, he's also probably NHL ready. There are a few trade options, Taylor Hall is an old friend and probably wouldn't cost a kings ransom to bring in and would add some speed and offense to the middle 6. Frank Vatrano has shown he has a bit of offensive touch and while last year was certainly an outlier for him he's a reliable middle-6 offensive option with some speed as well.

The obvious area to improve is goaltending, and honestly I don't think it's going to be possible. There are no options out there that are substantially better than Skinner/Pickard that wouldn't cost every draft pick until 2035. They probably have to make do with what they have, maybe bringing in a secondary backup option in case of injury would be good. I know they added Colin Delia but I don't want to have to rely on him to play if possible.

There's room for improvement for certain, but the Oilers are definitely a top flight team and one of the top contenders for the cup this year, even despite a slow start (which is still substantially better than last year).
 
IanO said:
Yup, but, Nurse was head down, crouching, oblivious...
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At worst he deserved to be hit shoulder to shoulder, blaming the victim is immature. He's rounding the corner at a high rate of speed, and knows Reaves is coming, he's getting ready to get rid of the puck before he does. The puck is in front of him, Reaves has a clear line to strip the puck and bump Nurse in the process, but still hits his head before anything else. The emphasis on making a safe play is entirely on Reaves. Blaming the puck carrier is the absolute last way to make the game safer.
 
Dubas said:
At worst he deserved to be hit shoulder to shoulder, blaming the victim is immature. He's rounding the corner at a high rate of speed, and knows Reaves is coming, he's getting ready to get rid of the puck before he does. The puck is in front of him, Reaves has a clear line to strip the puck and bump Nurse in the process, but still hits his head before anything else. The emphasis on making a safe play is entirely on Reaves. Blaming the puck carrier is the absolute last way to make the game safer.
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There is a duty on each side and both failed.
 
There is something to be said for keeping your head up and knowing how to take contact, however Nurse is definitely not the type of player that needs a lesson in how to deal with hits, he's played over 600 games in the NHL and has taken and thrown his fair share. A defenseman taking a hit while rounding the net is pretty rare, but not unheard of especially from a player like Reaves. Could Nurse have made the contact not as bad by being more aware absolutely, but the responsibility is on Reaves to make sure he makes a safe play.

The easy thing for him to do is just keep his shoulder down and not thrust his knees upwards into the hit. It's pretty clear from the footage Nurse doesn't know he's coming and is in a vulnerable position, Reaves does not adjust his path or how he throws the hit. I'm fine with throwing him throwing a check here, and there are ways he could have made this play and it would have just been a hard hit on an opponent with their head down, but Reaves raises his shoulder and flexes his knees making the point of contact a lot higher than it should have been.
 
IanO said:
There is a duty on each side and both failed.
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Headshot clear as day, Nurse does not have a duty to assume and subsequently avoid a headhunter. Thinking otherwise shows your warped thinking about the responsibilities of players in player safety.
 
5 games was probably not enough... was thinking 7-10, but that's the NHL.

I looked at the hit a few times from a few angles and Nurse was oblivious to anyone coming in a very well known location for huge hits like that and had crouched (see above) so that his head was probably 6-8" lower which put himself in a very, very bad situation. Regardless, it was an awful hit and not one we ever want to see.
 
The top 6 wingers have been horrid, bottom 6 finishing is very below par, and goaltending is worst in the league. top 6 play and bottom 6 finishing will regress to the mean but they need to add a goalie asap stu skinner is just not good and pickard is meh for a back up.
 
The Oilers have claimed F Kasperi Kapanen off waivers from the St Louis Blues. A speedy forward who has had some good years a while back but has been very meh in recent years. We'll see where he goes. My guess is he'll start on the 3rd or 4th line.

There's some upside here, but I feel like this is a bit of a move just to get a bit of a shake up. He's an NHL callibre player for sure, I'm not sure he's more than a bottom sixer who is an alright skater though.
 
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