Oilers LOSE AGAIN! McDavid’s Legacy at Risk? Skinner’s Future in Edmonton 🚨

Peter Klein

The Oilers fell short in the Stanley Cup Final—what’s next for McDavid, Skinner, and the team? Full analysis.  **Follow for NHL & CFL updates!**  #Oilers #McDavid #NHL

Transcript

00:00So, on one hand, you have a dynasty that is forming. On the other hand, you have a lot of

00:13very difficult questions that need to be answered after back-to-back Stanley Cup losses for the

00:18Edmonton Oilers. Let's talk about the series, first of all. This was one where they got beaten

00:23up, and they wore down, and eventually, I think, the better team won this series. You stack up these

00:30two rosters, and aside from, you know, the best and third best player in the world, it ain't close.

00:36It's not. It's just not. It is a credit to McDavid and Dreisaitl and the other pieces who stepped up

00:43along the way for getting this team to this point, but they have to get beyond this point. There is

00:49only one stop left beyond it, but that's the one that they have to get to when you have the high

00:53level talent that this team has at this point. And so, offensively, they, did they miss Hyman? Yes.

01:01Was that the reason they lost? I don't think so, because Corey Perry did a pretty darn good Zach

01:07Hyman impression, and this team, in six games, ends up losing by 11 goals total, right? Like,

01:1228-17, I believe, is what the final goal call was. So, Corey Perry, like, maybe he is not Zach Hyman,

01:22but Hyman ain't making up 11 in this series over what Perry was doing, right? So, I don't, I just,

01:28I don't. And because you put Perry back on the fourth line, and you saw he wasn't as effective.

01:33I would say the top line wasn't as effective. I thought that was a mistake from Knobloch,

01:37trying to get something out of more lines than just a McDavid one, and just a dry sidle one. But

01:43offensively, these guys just, they couldn't, they couldn't figure out Bobrovsky. McDavid never really

01:48had that dominant takeover game. It was all very well done on the Florida Panthers' side of the

01:55equation to, to limit all of those opportunities. Defensively, it was way too many turnovers. That's

02:00what got them. They were beat up, they were wore down. This team was over their skis defensively

02:04for, like, two months in this postseason, right? Like, we were mocking the players that they were

02:09throwing out there on the blue line, and they were getting the job done. They were playing with such

02:13great speed on the defensive end, and playing pretty sound defensive hockey. You were wondering,

02:20like, okay, is this just, is this just this team now? Against the Panthers, they weren't. Because

02:25Florida has a way of exploiting a lot of weaknesses that you may have, and just beating you up. And again,

02:32it takes three mistakes, and you're down three nothing. That's a lot to come up against. That's

02:37a really, really difficult team to have to battle with. So, for the Oilers, no question, they felt a

02:45little bit overwhelmed here. And then I just think a lot of guys who were playing better than their

02:49hockey DB page, whether it was Klingberg, whether it was Bouchard, defensively, right? Kulak, all these

02:55guys were playing so much better than you would expect them to play, and that all came crashing down

03:01against the Florida Panthers. And then there's the goalie question. Did they lose this series

03:06because of Stuart Skinner? They did not. He was not the biggest reason that they won, or that they

03:14lost. Sorry. But Bobrovsky wasn't the biggest reason the Panthers won, either. But he was still

03:19so much better than Skinner was. And it's just, it's again, it is every mistake ends up in the back of

03:25your net. You don't want your, you don't need your goalie to have a safe percentage of a thousand

03:29on high danger chances, but could we get to 800? And Skinner was that in the first part,

03:33and then he wasn't as that series went along. This team has a lot of holes that they need to plug,

03:40but getting an upgrade in goal is now absolutely crucial to this team getting, ultimately,

03:46where they need to get to with McDavid and Tricidal. Yes, the defense needs to improve,

03:51I'm not doubting that for a second. Yes, this team needs to get more scoring, aside from the top two

03:57guys. But they need a goalie who can steal them a game or two. It's asking a lot of a team to

04:05win 16 games in the playoffs and have your goalie not steal you some. And maybe he did against the

04:11Stars, but you need at least, they needed at least one in these. Just while everything is going crazy

04:16and trying to get a little bit of momentum, could you just not let the first one in at any point and

04:22see if we can do it? So was he the biggest problem? No, but he was not anywhere close to being part of

04:27the solution either. And right now, Edmonton is just looking for solutions. You can bring Couch Potato

04:33Diary with you wherever you go. Make sure you check out the podcast as it is available on Spotify,

04:39also on Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Looking now at kind of the future for the Edmonton

04:47Oilers. The question is, how does this team get over the hump? The answer is, um, get a whole lot

04:52better while getting significantly more expensive. Every team is going to go into this offseason

04:57thinking, ah, you know what though? Caps going up. Salary caps going up. We're going to be golden,

05:03baby. We got this. Um, I don't know if Edmonton can be relying on that necessarily because Bouchard,

05:11his extension is basically going to make up for a lot of the growth that they had in the salary cap

05:18anyway. So there goes that. And then also Connor McDavid is going to get a significant raise in a

05:24year. That's going to take up a lot. So now how do you find the depth pieces that you are having

05:29trouble finding anyway? Improve the blue line that you haven't been able to improve aside from one very

05:34good trade with Ekholm in a really, really long time and find any goalie who can make a stop in the

05:39Stanley Cup final while having less resources to do that with. This is, this is where the GMs earn

05:46their money. And Stan Bowman, I hate that he has another opportunity in the National Hockey League.

05:51Uh, it's not an easy one now because he has to find a way to live up to the expectations of Stanley

05:58Cup or bust with the best player on the earth right now and not a whole lot of money to work with.

06:05And that there's not much you can do. Like we can point here and say, yeah, Darnell Nurse has one of

06:11the worst contracts in the NHL at, what was it? 9.5, 9.25. And he is a liability. Back-to-back

06:18cup runs, he has been a liability. And last year you could blame it on Cody CC. This year,

06:23like I get, like Kulak's not going in the Hall of Fame, but he's at least steady. And it still didn't

06:28matter. You can't have your defense, your top paid defenseman be that much of a liability for

06:35your team and still have any hope of succeeding. And then you are overpaying, um, guys like, um,

06:42like Arvidson. Kane is getting wildly overpaid right now. You are going, if you want to get off

06:48of those players, you are going to have to attach draft picks to them, basically, if you are going

06:52to get them out of town. So it's, it's going to be a lot of work for Edmonton to try to get over

06:58the hump. Um, and then you have a giant question hanging over Connor McDavid. I, I don't think he

07:06leaves. I think that Connor McDavid is going to be an Edmonton oiler for life. I would be very

07:11surprised if it was the other way, but that is on the table now because this is, we are going into

07:17year 10 with this guy and for him to not have one Stanley cup ring while he is so much better than

07:26everyone else who plays in this league is beyond comprehension. Like you could sim his career

07:33a number of different times. And this, aside from catastrophic injury, this run would be like

07:40toward the bottom of what was possible with this player. It has been mismanagement the entire way

07:46along. And so now, now, now it really, the pressure is really on with what do they do

07:53with this particular hockey player, because he is still elite, but he is still ringless. And that's

08:00insane. When you see him stand out at the four nations, when you see him stand out in last year's

08:05playoffs and how, even when it feels like he was down in this series, it's still like seven, eight

08:09points in the Stanley cup final against one of the better defensive teams we have had in a really long

08:14time. They, they have a lot of work to do. I'm not going to do the, will he demand a trade? Cause I

08:22don't think so. I, I do not think he will do that. The one question I have, and we can go into it, um,

08:29a little bit more as this season goes on or as the off season goes on, if he doesn't sign that extension

08:36by like five o'clock Eastern time on July 1st, you start to have the conversation of not

08:45could they, but should they move on from him? And I am, I'm not like, I'm not doing this to be hot

08:52takey. It is just, this is one of the things you now have to think about with this, because you

08:56as an organization can not let him walk out the door for free. And so if you guys are $250,000 off

09:03on a deal, Hey, like shut up and just give it to him. But B like, if you guys are close,

09:07then obviously not, right? Like, of course not. But if it feels like there's just nothing happening,

09:12like you want to give him, um, eight by 17 and he wants four by 20 and just none of those,

09:20you can't find a middle ground. Then what do you do? Because you're the organization that traded away

09:27Wayne Gretzky and are kind of forever known as that, but yet you are also the organization that

09:34traded away Wayne Gretzky and still won the damn thing after you did that. So like, I don't even

09:40know what a trade would look like for a McDavid or anything like that, but it is just, if that

09:45extension isn't signed almost immediately, it becomes something you at least have to think about

09:49because you can not, can not let that go for free and just go, ah, well, $12.5 million in cap space.

09:56So that's awesome. Um, that, that's just not how it goes. Uh, we got a tall John 75 in the chat here

10:02talking about the Edmonton Oilers goalie is number one. Connor needs to have, uh, Connor needs to take

10:07a team friendly deal to be with Leon, let the team have a serious cup run or multiple cup runs to be

10:13able, um, to best, uh, or sorry to, to beat this Panthers type of a team. I, I don't know where I come

10:23down on this because like Crosby forever took team friendly deals and that allowed them to

10:28keep Malkin and Letang and Fleury for a bit and, and all of that at the same time, like I would

10:36argue he is on one now, like him at $12.5 million should be team friendly enough for the best player

10:45in the world at that, that like he, that, that should be, I gave you guys enough for that. Like

10:51I, I, I feel like this is a time to, um, like you have such a small earning window when you are

11:02a professional athlete, right? And no one's crying poor for these guys, but it is like your job to

11:08try to get as much money out of this as humanly possible. And now like, of course there's a point,

11:12right? Like he has already made a lot of money and the difference between a $100 million contract

11:17and a $95 million contract probably doesn't mean that much to him. And he doesn't strike me as the

11:22type who needs to be the highest paid player in the national hockey league. I do think there is

11:27pressure from the PA. Like, I don't think he can go into free agency when you have the salary cap

11:32going up. And when you have Panarin as a, um, a UFA, when you have, um, Kaprizov as a UFA, Kyle

11:38Connor is going to be up. Like you have a lot of guys whose contracts are going to be up and kind

11:43of hoping for him to reset the market when it comes to star players. He can't take eight by eight,

11:47seven, five. Like he just, he can't. And the PA would like simply not allow that. They would like

11:54the contract on fire themselves. I'm just like, Hey, can you just pass that over for us? Fuck

12:00yourself. Get double digits. At least let's go here. Right? Like there's, there is that level of it.

12:04So I, I hear what you are saying. And I think of it as any kind of hometown discount, it has to be

12:12like two or $3 million a year type of a discount to, to be able to, to try to help the team out.

12:18But like it, he is going to be the highest paid player on this team. So that means it is a raise

12:22of at least two and a half million dollars. And I think it should probably be significantly more

12:26than that based off of this. But yeah, like I'm not going to hold it against him. I'll say if he

12:31doesn't take a hometown discount or anything like that. Right? So it's, it's an interesting

12:36kind of a next layer too. It's like, okay, how much do you want to win? Cause you know,

12:41that story is going to happen, right? There's enough people in Edmonton that if he signs eight

12:45by 20, there's going to be people being like, well, he just killed the franchise that this guy

12:50is so selfish, clearly doesn't want to win just focusing on himself for trying to make the most

12:55money possible that there are going to be those conversations. Um, but I, I do not begrudge the

13:01best player on earth wanting to be paid as such, uh, deeds in the chat. If you are off by a million

13:08dollars, you pay McDavid. Oh yeah. Like if you were off by a million, you don't try to, Hey,

13:13can we wiggle that down by $500,000? It's like, Oh no, you know what? Um, boy, I, I could have swore

13:20we had a nine written down there. That's only an eight boy. I thought we must've been a typo. Yeah,

13:24no, we're, we're on the same page here. We're good. We're good. We got this. Yeah, we're, we're

13:28fine. Um, it would have to be that, it would be that sort of a conversation for me and a tall John

13:3375. Again, a McDavid trade would look like an Eric Lindros level of a trade from, um, Quebec. I think

13:39this could be, you know, we're getting into off season territory. And so if we wanted to freak some

13:44people out a little bit North of us, um, what would a trade from each team look like? Uh, it might put

13:49that in the old content bank going forward. Cause I think that could be a pretty fun conversation to have

13:54if for nothing else, just to, to, to dare to dream, I would say, but overall the, the, the saying

14:02so close, but yet so far really does feel like it pertains to this Oilers team. Cause they were,

14:08they were two wins away from the Stanley cup this year and one went away last year. That is it's

14:13closer than every other team, but one has got to the Stanley cup in the last two years, but you look

14:17on the ice and they're not close. And you look on the Puckpedia page and they're really not close.

14:21And you just think of how they could get better. I don't know where better is coming from. The

14:25obvious one is John Gibson, but that's been an obvious trade for four years. They're going to,

14:29they're going to trade for this guy when he's 39 years old and he's coming in on a last legs of a

14:34contract. Hey, finally got him. Um, that like that, that one needs to be addressed. The, the goalie

14:40situation. Stuart Skinner seems like an awesome dude. Everyone who has interviewed him has,

14:44cannot stress enough how awesome this guy is. Uh, super. He'll be fine being a backup next year

14:52then because he is not winning a Stanley cup with this team. They have two examples of it now

14:57in back-to-back playoffs. He's been pulled because he's been bad and this last one, they needed him

15:02to be great. And he just didn't get there with this team. So is that to say he never will? No,

15:08but this Oilers team does not have time to figure it out with him. Um, but yeah,

15:13fun conversation and a lot more, um, to, to come on that in the weeks and months ahead.

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