I don’t know if it’s a New Jersey thing, but there’s a lot of hostility that comes from ESPN insiders Greg Wyshynski and Emily Kaplan when the Edmonton Oilers are concerned. Let it go, folks! I get it, Wayne Gretzky took a shot at your team decades ago… It’s time to move on though.
That’s what I would say if I were an over-sensitive Oilers fan after reading Kaplan’s latest mid-offseason NHL rankings over on ESPN‘s website, and to be honest, when I saw that she’d ranked the Oilers 17th out of 31 teams behind Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and Calgary; I was a little bit annoyed at that.
What nips at my sack is that there seems to be very little thought put into the rankings on the whole.
For instance, the Dallas Stars, who are set to be without franchise player Tyler Seguin and starting goalie Ben Bishop until March(ish) are ranked 4th. What?! I get that Anton Khudobin had a spectacular playoff performance but he’s never been a starter. Dallas was the 3rd-worst scoring team in the league last year, without Seguin, who will pick up that slack? I mean, if you take him off of Dallas’ team last year, their top-scorer would’ve been Jamie Benn with 39 POINTS!!!
Dallas will be lucky to even get a sniff of the post-season in 2020-21.
The Oilers were a better team than the Stars last season, they upgraded their roster more this off-season, and the core in Edmonton is lead by two MVPs in Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Kaplan and the team over at ESPN somehow reckon the Stars are better by a 13-team margin… Dallas isn’t the 4th best team in the league, they weren’t the 2nd-best last year either, they just caught fire in the summer tournament where the Stanley Cup was rewarded.
The Boston Bruins are next at 5th. Can you tell me who will be stepping up to fill the voids left by Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak who won’t be back until February, maybe? Craig Smith is good, but he’s not 50-goal or 90pts/yr good. We don’t know if Zdeno Chara will be coming back but we do know that Torey Krug isn’t. So that’s arguably two top-four defencemen gone too. How’s Tuuka Rask feeling about being a Bruin these days after the abuse he took during the summer from that fanbase?
Baffling… I actually think that the Bruins are going to regress in a big way next season.
More specific to the Canadian clubs, here’s how they play out in Kaplan’s rankings:
11th – Toronto, 14th – Vancouver, 15th – Montreal, 16th – Calgary, 17th – Edmonton, 18th – Winnipeg, 30th – Ottawa.
Last season, the Oilers were the BEST Canadian team in the regular season. When the pause occurred, they were 12th best in the NHL. So, how is it that with all the upgrades they made this off-season that they now warrant a place out of the playoffs?
The Canucks lost a starting goalie, a top-four d-man, and a top-six winger. This team’s RW depth consists of Brock Boeser more or less. How is this a team that is destined for the playoffs but Edmonton isn’t.
I can’t argue with Montreal and Toronto. They’re definitely playoff teams.
The Maple Leafs are a playoff team in my mind and they didn’t have to do too much to it to keep it that way. The big question with them is how far they can go in the post-season with this group and the belief is that the additions of Zach Bogosian, Wayne Simmonds, and Joe Thornton will help them get over the hump.
Montreal has had the best off-season, in my opinion. They’re much deeper now and really, the only thing holding them back is if Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Nick Suzuki don’t produce.
Calgary is a bit of a wildcard in that they’ve got a forward core that is very competitive and quite deep, they signed the top-free agent goalie in this year’s class (Jakob Markstrom), and their defence will feature two very talented young defencemen (Juuso Valimaki, Rasmus Andersson). But for whatever reason, this group cannot get it done.
The Jets are on their way out. It wouldn’t shock me if Ottawa actually finished ahead of them.
I don’t know. Maybe the piece was put out there to initiate conversation.
Personally, I’d have the team ranked 10th and ahead of all the other Canadian franchises too. My feeling is that unless the Oilers get hit hard by the injury bug, they will sit atop the All-Canadian division when the 2020-21 regular season is over and be a favorite for the Stanley Cup.
At the end of the day, there’s not a lot going on aside from return to play news. So I can’t really blame the folks at ESPN for producing those rankings and I really should be thankful because it’s given me something to write about.
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