Oilers need major changes but should they trust Holland to make them?
The Edmonton Oilers are running out of time.
Following yet another loss where the team’s goaltending skewered them, it’s becoming painfully obvious that the Oilers are flawed. The defencemen can’t defend, the goalies can’t make a save, and the forwards are not able to outscore these mistakes like in previous seasons.
Calling this season a wash and letting it continue to play out like it has cannot be an option. This is a team that should be a contender, and with both Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid needing extensions over the next few years, the future of the franchise could very well lie in how this season goes.
If the team misses the playoffs, that could put a severe dent in the chances that both superstars re-sign in the Alberta capital.
The team is a woeful 5-12-1 through the first 18 games of the season and is 30th in the league. To even think about making the playoffs, they would have to make an incredible run to make up for lost time. That won’t happen if they stand pat for much longer.
Something needs to be done, and it needs to be done now. A trade for a new goalie would be the obvious move for the team to make. It’s the most glaring weakness for the Oilers, as they currently rank last in the league in team save percentage at a dismal .889.
That, however, is not the kind of change that should be done quite yet. The team’s first order of business should be evaluating whether Holland should remain the guy in charge of making that kind of change.
When he was hired in 2019, Holland was tasked with helping fix the team’s biggest roster holes, one of which was finding a starting goaltender. Four years later, the team is as lost as ever in the position.
After years of constructing the Oilers roster and failing to address the team’s biggest weakness, the question needs to be asked: why does he still have a job?
Holland’s contract with Edmonton ends at the end of the season, and there is widespread belief that he will be retiring after it expires, so why should the organization trust a lame-duck GM to make one of the most important moves for the future of the franchise? If the plan is to move on from Holland, the team may as well do it now and let the next GM have a head-start on cleaning up the mess.
If Oilers CEO Jeff Jackson is as serious as he says he is about winning in Edmonton, these are the types of difficult decisions that need to be considered. They already fired former head coach Jay Woodcroft, despite him having the franchise’s best winning percentage among coaches, and there is nobody else to shovel the blame onto other than the architect of the team, which has been Holland.
The problems that plague this team all fall into the hands of the 68-year-old executive. The Oilers prospect cabinet is dry, and not a single first-round pick made during Holland’s tenure has made a meaningful impact on the NHL.
The salary-cap situation has been muddled more than ever due to overpaying guys like Campbell and Darnell Nurse. The defence, which needed to be upgraded over the summer, is the same group that ended last season. Depth scoring is as dry as ever after self-inflicted cap mistakes forced the team into offloading Kailer Yamamoto, Klim Kostin, and Nick Bjugstad.
Add that onto previous missteps such as the Zack Kassian contract and trade, the failed Andreas Athanasiou trade, and taking on Duncan Keith’s full cap hit, and you have a laundry list of mistakes that have contributed to the current situation. For every Zach Hyman or Ekholm acquisition, there is a corresponding negative move working against it. You can’t win in the NHL with that type of track record, unfortunately.
Rumours have popped up about the team possibly considering hiring player agent Dave Gagner to replace Holland at the end of the year. That timeline is becoming more and more unrealistic for a team that can’t afford to sit on its hands.
If the Oilers are destined to lose Holland at the end of the season, they may as well cut ties now.