Before the lockout, Kevin Lowe and Craig MacTavish were on record, after losing yet again to the Dallas Stars in 2003 (ah, the Marc-Andre Bergeron hipcheck...), as saying that you couldn't hope for too much in the NHL absent a true star. The first move after the lockout? Trading away useful pieces and prospects that had made up the struggling, small-market Oiler identity (Eric Brewer, Jeff Woywitka, Doug Lynch and Mike York) for big names envisioned to make up the New World Order Oilers (Chris Pronger, Mike Peca). That year, Oiler fans saw what a combination of true stars, breakout youngsters and role players could accomplish (along with one of the greatest Trade Deadline Day acquisitions ever, Dwayne Roloson. I'll justify that in a later post) as the team went as far as possible without ultimate glory. It was the first time arguably since 1991 (with a case to be made for the Curtis Joseph years of 1997-1998), that fans and management saw an Oiler team with serious talent and both were seduced by the new NHL where stars could be theirs again.
In the years following the debilitating Pronger trade and departures of Mike Peca, Jaroslav Spacek and Sergei Samsonov, Kevin Lowe tried and failed to duplicate his golden touch of 2006. He attempted to acquire (if you believe the rumours) Tomas Kaberle (in the Pronger trade sweepstakes), Zdeno Chara, Michael Nylander, Marian Hossa, Jaromir Jagr and most infamously, Dany Heatley. That same superstar-first dogma did bring in Sheldon Souray, Lubomir Vishnovsky and Eric Cole but the team hasn't made the playoffs since with an ever-increasing player payroll. This year's team, guaranteed to finish last in the NHL, has all the requirements for a complete demolishing. It wasn't easy putting together this mess of failing players and worse contracts, but it makes a little more sense when looking at each step.
None of Souray, Vishnovsky or Cole were in the same class as Pronger, Chara, Hossa or Heatley but the way they were acquired is indicative of management's focus on older, more expensive and more established players at the expense of youth and cap space. In 2007, Lowe made a huge offer sheet to Thomas Vanek which was matched by Buffalo, did the same with Dustin Penner and signed him to a 5 year, $21.25 million contract, then finally signed Souray for 5 years at $27 million. Penner was certainly a young player but his RFA signing, which famously cost the team its first, second and third round draft picks, forced the team into a win-now mentality. If Anaheim had matched instead of passing, Lowe might have kept trying other RFA offer sheets but it's more likely he would have given up, settled for a rebuild instead, and passed on Souray entirely. After all, you can only drive up the RFA salary base so many times in one off-season. Presumably, Lowe had intentions of attending GM meetings without wearing a black mask with a question mark on it. Penner would have an average year, Souray tantalized early but only played 26 games after a shoulder injury, and the Oilers would miss the playoffs despite a late run fueled by a crop of rookies. More on that later.
On the heals of an unexpected playoff push, the summer of 2008 saw more big swings and bold moves. Hossa and Jagr were sought and missed out on while Cole and Vishnovksy did come to Edmonton in trades. Vishnovsky was acquired at the beginning of a 5 year, $28 million contract for Jarret Stoll and Matt Greene, two players drafted and developed internally. Vishnovsky was having a strong season with 31 points in 50 games before, yes, injuring his shoulder and missing the rest of the season. Losing Stoll and Greene hurt the Oiler penalty kill, it was 5th in the NHL at 84.7% at the end of 2008 and would plummet to 27th (77.5%) by the end of 2009. There were obvious similarities between the Souray and Vishnovsky acquisitions: they were both expensive, injury plagued, effective when healthy, and both their signings contributed to weaknesses in other areas. Penner and Souray are linked in my mind; that combined cap hit of $9.65 million certainly stifled any thoughts of resigning effective role players like Curtis Glencross and Jan Hejda, while also putting pressure on signing today's RFA's Sam Gagner, Andrew Cogliano and Gilbert Brule. Vishnovsky's salary and the loss of Stoll and Greene hurt the Oiler cap situation, penalty kill and seemed to weaken the leadership core and physical play. The 2008-2009 Oilers often drove fans and media crazy with many subpar efforts and while Vishnovsky wasn't a specific target of criticism, losing Stoll, the team leader in hits the year before and Greene, a big, stay-at-home defenseman, certainly cut into the team's physical intensity.
The Cole story goes back further and serves as a good example of Oiler management trying to retool and rebuild on the fly. Chris Pronger was traded for Joffrey Lupul, Ladislav Smid, a first round pick in 2007 (Riley Nash) a conditional first round pick (Jordan Eberle) activated when Anaheim made the Finals in 2007, and a second round pick (long story, but it was shuffled around into the Marc-Andre Bergeron/Denis Grebeshkov trade). Lupul was a well-regarded sniper and along with Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry and Dustin Penner represented the future of the Ducks. He was a restricted free agent when acquired and quickly signed a three year, $6.935 million contract. A reasonable trade on paper for Edmonton, getting a young shooter to pair with Horcoff and Hemsky on the top line, plus one of the best young defensive prospects not in the NHL, and three picks for a player at his absolute peak trade value. This was a true rebuild trade but even so, the Oilers expected to be a strong team in 2006-2007, one that even had aspirations for a 300 goal season (adding up what their assembled roster had scored the previous season). Instead they struggled, ended up trading Ryan Smyth for Robert Nilsson, Ryan O'Marra and a first round pick (Alex Plante), and would eventually plummet in the standings. The Pronger and Smyth trades signaled that it was time to forget the glory of 2006, clear salary, and focus on youth. The Oilers went into the 2007-2008 with recent 6th overall draft pick Sam Gagner, college draft pick Andrew Cogliano, Robert Nilssen, Tom Gilbert and Denis Grebeshkov. They had positioned themselves well for the future in one set of moves, except that a different set would soon be running parallel.
Instead of being content with a true youth movement though, Kevin Lowe got impatient. He aggressively tried to supplement their young core with the expensive signing, in dollars and draft picks, of Dustin Penner and attempted signing of fellow RFA Thomas Vanek. Signing Penner and losing their draft picks meant, obviously, that they had to be good right away lest Anaheim draft a Stamkos, Doughty or Bogosian the following off-season. The Penner signing, therefore, necessitated the Souray signing and would lead to the game of musical chairs to follow as management fumbled around in the dark looking for the elusive formula. That same off-season they gave up on Lupul after his disappointing 28 points and traded him, along with Jason Smith for, principally, Joni Pitkanen. Pitkanen was younger than Smith and gave the Oilers a slightly bigger but far less physical puck-mover who could run the powerplay. Like the Vishnovsky trade to come, they sacrificed grit and intensity for pure skill. Pitkanen played 63 games, had 26 points, was ineffective physically and was traded the following off-season for Eric Cole. Cole's season started terribly and was eventually traded at the deadline for Patrick O'Sullivan, a once well-regarded prospect and current owner of the worst plus/minus in the NHL. Today, it all amounts to Pronger and Jason Smith for Patrick O'Sullivan, Ladislav Smid, Riley Nash and Jordan Eberle (and if you like, you can add the Marc-Andre Bergeron for Denis Grebeshkov component).
The path of Eric Cole to and from the Oilers shows how management was all over the map with their short and long-term planning. The trades in particular made sense on their own and were mostly justifiable, they just never worked out on the ice. Jason Smith was getting older, Lupul crumbled in his hometown and they didn't have any defense who could skate and pass the puck out of their zone, so Pitkonen was a likely target. When his defensive lapses, lack of intensity and Tom Gilbert's emergence made him expendable, he was traded for rock-solid power forward Eric Cole. Cole was struggling and was a UFA so he was traded for O'Sullivan, a young shooter under contract. It all made sense. Management was trying new things, they made trades to address their weaknesses, and any fan or columnist could instantly recognize why each move was made.
The problem was that the team was constantly making trades and personnel decisions that ran parallel to each other. In the summer of 2007, going into a year where they'd start with four rookies (Gagner, Cogliano, Gilbert and Nilsson) in the lineup, they signed Souray and Penner, they pursued Vanek in a deal that would have cost them five consecutive first round draft picks and over $50 million, and were spurned by Michael Nylander, an aging center whose stats were grossly inflated playing with Jaromir Jagr in New York. These are signings a team makes when the young core has some legitimate experience, in other words completely unlike the Oilers going into 2007-2008. With ice time committed to developing so many rookies they should certainly have avoided any RFA offer sheets lest the team fail on the ice. If the rookies fail, a lottery pick stands as a pretty satisfying consolation prize. If they succeed, management can then add veteran talent later when they know what holes need filling.
The summer of 2008 saw more of the same big-money moves and ignored the necessary small steps of rebuilding. They made the Vishnovsky trade, pursued Marian Hossa with a rumoured 9 year, $90 million contract, re-signed Shawn Horcoff to six years and $33 million in a deal that was fairly popular then but since, well, not so much. All this win-now mentality was running contradictory to the product on the ice; in 2007-2008 it was rookies Gagner, Cogliano, Nilsson, Gilbert, Grebeshkov, free-agent Mathieu Garon and the effective checking line of Kyle Brodziak, Curtis Glencross and Zack Stortini who overachieved and lead the late-season charge for a playoff spot. This all occured when the expensive veteran core, made up of Stoll, Moreau, Horcoff, Torres and Souray, had succumbed to injury and the season considered lost. After an inspiring playoff push it seemed like a great time to go for broke; the Oilers were exciting to watch again and looked to be on the rise. Kevin Lowe thought they were the Chicago Blackhawks and just needed the finishing touches. In reality they just got lucky; the rookies saved the team from watching the Ducks draft a franchise cornerstone and only mitigated the cost of signing Penner. Instead of seeing this, Lowe (and most of the media and fans, including me) dramatically overvalued the Oiler assets, raised instead of tempered expectations, ignored the contributions of young, cheap and soon departed players like Glencross (Oiler stats: 26 games, 9 goals, 13 points. That's 28 goals in 82 games) and Matt Greene and failed to realize the most important lesson: rookies playing freely with no expectations play differently than sophmores in a pressure city on a team predicted by many to win the Northwest division. Going for broke left them as just that.
All this means is that the rebuild occurring now, instead of the 2007 and 2008 off-seasons, is happening under a much more difficult set of circumstances. While selling a complete tear-down so quickly removed from a Finals appearance would not have been popular, they would have been operating under much easier circumstances. First, the NHL salary cap increased in 2007 and 2008 by approximately $6 million each year, meaning any big contracts could have been traded away much more easily. Not that they had many, following the Pronger trade the highest paid Oiler was Ales Hemsky at $4.22 million after re-signing in 2006. Compare that to today. Horcoff, Souray, Nilsson, O'Sullivan and Khabibulin all have contracts considered immovable, especially in an era where the salary cap has been stagnant for the last two years and teams have been extremely guarded with their draft picks. Three years ago they might've got a first round pick and a prospect for Lubomir Vishnovsky. Instead, they had to settle for merely cap savings of just over $1 million on Ryan Whitney's contract of the same length. Of course, nobody could see such a dramatic economic recession coming, but the result was that the Oilers ended up with a long list of long term contracts, no cap space, at the worst time. In retrospect it seems pretty obvious, management totally overestimated the quality of their team, swung for the fences when they should've been conservative, grown their young talent, accumulated draft picks, and planned for the future. It's a disaster, it'll take time to fix and the fans are frustrated with such obvious miscalculations.
It's important to remember the context to understand why Oiler management made so many bold moves and tried for so many more. Suddenly, following the lockout and fifteen years of mediocrity, the Oilers were Haves again. After so many years of low expectations and short ends of the trading stick the team had the means, the cap system and the soaring Canadian dollar to return to the NHL's elite. Stars would come back to Edmonton, the playoffs were no longer an endless gauntlet of big-money American franchises and the Oilers would be a feared calendar date once again. Once the city had that again it was hard to let it go, impossible really, as fans and local media handled the Pronger trade with the highest orders of denial, insisting that since Carolina had won a Cup with a no-name defense, so could Edmonton. After all, there was still playoff hero Dwayne Roloson, our own Dominik Hasek, complete with the flopping and histrionics, a five-forward powerplay begging to be unleashed by Craig MacTavish and newly re-signed core of playoff cogs ready for another run. When it began to crumble away, Lowe did everything he could to quickly put it back together but his magic was gone. Nothing worked, injuries broke the team in 2007-2008, again this year, and all the big signings and trades may have had their individual merits but one can't argue with four straight post-season absences. All the mistakes look obvious now but, given the heady days of 2006 and a topsy-turvy world where a team from Edmonton could make the Stanley Cup Finals, it was probably inevitable.
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