Oilers' Team-Building Mistakes The Blackhawks Should Learn From
The Oilers aren't the perfect team and have overcome a lot to get to the 2024 Stanley Cup Final. The Blackhawks can learn from Edmonton's mistakes.
Oilers' Team-Building Mistakes The Blackhawks Should Learn FromThe Edmonton Oilers have been on the verge of elimination in the Stanley Cup Final to the Florida Panthers for two games now. Win or lose, the Oilers have made some team-building mistakes the Chicago Blackhawks should learn from.
Surrounding Stars With Talent
If we were to compare the Blackhawks' hopeful turnaround to any team, the Oilers would be at the top of the list. Both have the task of building a successful team around a generational talent, which isn't as easy as it sounds. Time seems to tick faster and any blunders are larger when the expectation is an eventual Stanley Cup.
The Oilers have struggled to surround Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl with adequate talent on the wings, and the two stars are in their ninth and tenth seasons. It has been a little better this season, but it is still not where it needs to be consistently.
Even in the playoffs, McDavid and Draisaitl have had a number of wingers that include 39-year-old former Blackhawk Corey Perry (at the end of his career), Warren Foegele, and Ryan McLeod. All are bottom-6 forwards and this is deep into the playoffs.
In Connor Bedard's 2023-24 rookie season, some things got in the way of him being surrounded by adequate talent. Taylor Hall's knee surgery complicated things, but there really wasn't a backup plan to an injury prone veteran being out of the lineup. We saw players like Ryan Donato and Nick Foligno play on the top line when they are both clearly not top line players.
Fortunately Bedard did get some help all season with the emergence of Philipp Kurashev. His play and the healthy return of Hall, plus anyone else that the Blackhawks may bring in this offseason, should all positively contribute to the success of the team next season and beyond.
Contract Situations
The Blackhawks have a lot of cap space to work with right now, but that won't always be the case. Bedard is going to take a big chunk out of that when his entry-level deal is up. Whoever is brought in will have a higher salary, and eventually other younger players are going to get their contracts like Alex Vlasic has.
When the cap space becomes more scarce, the decisions have to be better. There are three major examples on the Oilers during the McDavid era that has set them back despite McDavid carrying the team as far as they have gone this season.
Defenseman Darnell Nurse's eight-year, $74 million contract pays him just far too much per year. This mistake was made when he was bridged twice before signing long-term. For a player that proved he was going to be a solid NHLer at the time, waiting too long is only going to hurt more than it is going to help. Now the Oilers have played Nurse like a fourth defenseman throughout the playoffs. This isn't a problem a Stanley Cup contender needs to deal with for many more years.
Not only will bridging players multiple times be the wrong move for Chicago, they can learn from the UFAs brought in during free agency by the Oilers.
The two big blunders the Oilers made were signing free agent forward Milan Lucic in July 2016 and goalie Jack Campbell in July 2022.
Lucic's foot speed and skill set was already slipping and he was becoming a bottom-6 physical presence who struggled to score. He was given a seven-year, $42 million deal with the Oilers to be part of the solution. He was the opposite and money was wasted where it could have been put elsewhere to improve the team.
While Lucic actually did help at the very start of his contract, there hasn't been one positive with Campbell since being signed to a five-year, $25 million deal two years ago. He had a horrible 2022-23 season and was then demoted to the AHL at the start of 2023-24. For a cap-strapped team, this is far too much wasted cap space.
This might be what the Blackhawks have to be careful of this offseason. The difference being Chicago has a lot of cap space right now and aren't in the same spot to compete like the Oilers were when the team signed Lucic and Campbell. Nevertheless, UFA signings sometimes go very poorly and the team may be stuck with that contract for up to seven years.
It's not all that easy to avoid some of these mistakes as they are clearly not intended at the time of the decisions. While the Blackhawks can take stuff from successful teams, there are lessons to be learned from where teams also made big mistakes.
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