This might be one of the best Oilers articles I’ve read in a LONG time. An outstanding job done by Ryan (@edmoildrops) and I hope it gets some real traction in the oilogosphere.
Oh and a big congrats to our boy Leon Draisaitl for getting voted in as the last man for Team Pacific’s All-Star squad! It’ll be a ton of fun watching him and Connor light San Jose up!
We’ve all heard the arguments against Chiarelli by now. He traded Hall for Larsson, he traded Eberle for Strome and then Strome for Spooner, he traded the 16th (Barzal) and the 33rd picks (Stephen Mitchell) in the 2015 draft for Reinhart, he signed Lucic, he has a lot of “wasted cap space” on the roster, he traded the 5th leading scorer on the team for a healthy scratch with term, he has the best player in the world and the Oilers still can’t score goals or make the playoffs… we get it.
The fan base was already frustrated that the team had missed the playoffs for a decade straight before Chiarelli came along. Then the team made the playoffs in one season. Since then, the team missed the playoffs last season and are certainly not a lock to make the dance this season. Couple the failure to meet those expectations with the frustration of losing/missing out on some skilled players, and you’ve got one pissed off fan base that wants the GM fired.
I came across this blog entry on counterfactual thinking from Dr. Holly Parker in Psychology Today:
“We can rewind time and undo our past, leading us down an imaginary road toward an alternate present. In doing this, we see a picture of what we believe life would be like today if our yesterdays had happened differently. This type of imagery is called counterfactual thinking, and it can potently affect how we feel. Some situations are more likely to generate this kind of thinking than others. Moments we think of as “close calls” can make counterfactual ideas spring to mind with spectacular ease. For instance, if the train doors close as you’re running toward them, just a few feet away, it will probably feel more disappointing than if you know the train left 15 minutes before you even made it to the station. Why? Because a near miss makes it easier to imagine an alternate reality in which you had gotten there just a hair faster and boarded the train in time.”
I believe that counterfactual thinking is fuelling a lot of the frustration in Edmonton these days.
Click HERE to read why Ryan believes if Oilers fans are going to create an alternate reality where those trades didn’t happen, then they need to look at the other alternate reality where Chiarelli’s roster could have performed better than it actually has.
Give Ryan a follow on Twitter (@edmoildrops)
