He has this Puljarjvi guy to resign

Don't hate on your to-be hall of fame GM. The player has to want to sign with a club. Holland could have offered him more either in term or dollars, but if Ryan had no interest in joining the Oilers, it does not make a difference.

Or trade

Agree - have to think the Oilers would have offered similar contracts to Dzingle and Ferland, but the player wants to have to go there as well

Not hating, just frustrated seeing no improvements made this summer. I realise he didn't have a lot to work with, but he's spent all his cap space on bottom-6 bets that may or may not pay off and really don't push the team forward.

Yeah, and I can't see a lot of players wanting to go into a situation where a team has only 3 top-6 options, and those 3 are McDavid, Draisaitl and Nugent-Hopkins... oh, wait...

As far as I am aware, they did not actually make Ferland an offer. I am not sure if there was more general discussions back and forth with him about coming to the Oilers or not. As for Ryan, the consensus seemed to be that he wanted to play in the US, east coast preferred. A lot of people seemed to think he was going to Chicago. Oh well for that.

I am pretty sure Holland is doing some sort of soft-reboot. It would not surprise me one bit to see a lot of those 1-year contract guys like Smith, Jurco and Granlund be moved at the trade deadline for further assets.

Nobody wants to go to Edmonton at this point. It's pretty bad when no free agents want to join a team with the best player in the world.

Dzingel's wife is a golf player professional, he didn't sign at Ottawa before the Columbus trade at 5M 5 years... He wants play in the south

Golf is pretty good down here...

At Raleigh, yes, at Edmonton... not sure!!

Oh no, you didn't get Dzingel. LOL, if not getting a depth winger constitutes either a terrible day (edmonton) or a triumph (Carolina) then the state of your franchise isn't half as good as you hope it is. Dzingel is a nice piece but he doesn't hardly move the needle. Edmonton needs to draft and develop and they need to do that for a few years to get a supporting cast for McDavid. There is no quick fix here.

I'm not an Oilers fan but I've gotta agree with you, he hasn't done much and a few minor moves might of paid off, like would the Burakovsky trade not of been a good trade for the Oilers? I get the value of a 2nd and 3rd but they would of got a former 1st round pick who's an RFA so a controlled player, and 2nd and 3rd could take years to amount to something if they ever do, years the Oilers dont have. There's plenty of teams in a cap crunch that need to move decent players out but so far Holland hasn't moved on getting any of them.
Not saying he was gonna be able to turn this team into a contender in one offseason nor was any rational person thinking that was a possibility but so far I think he's getting a failing grade for what he's done and hasn't done this summer.

I'm sure most Oilers fans at this point are just hoping for some improvement this season, as of now with what Holland has done this team doesn't likely improve, it might even be worse as hard as that is to believe. Who knows, maybe that Swede they signed will be a top 6 player and Jurco will have a Chiasson type season which will help but if that doesn't happen it's another season of the Oilers going as far as McDavid and the 4 or 5 other good players the Oilers have can take them.

And in a few years McDavid says he wants out, sounds like a good plan.. Lol

what UFA wants to sign up to join the OIlers when McDavid is on borrowed time unless they can compete next year. You dont fix and build teams in Free Agency, you add a complementary pieces, Oilers are a long way a way from adding those pieces to win.

Holland screwed up by refusing to use assets to get rid of their problems like Lucic, Kassian, Russell...and buy out Sekera should have been the last thing to do vs getting rid of those 3 scrubbos. Oilers roster is a compelte mess and they are going to have to blow it up to build, not add middle 6 wingers in Free Agency.

When they were intereviewing for the job, candidates were telling them that it would take 2 years to fix this roster and they refused to believe that so they hired a guy who was naive enough to believe this roster was good enough

hes gone after this season. That roster is a mess. Koskinen and Mike smith might be the worst goalie tandem in the league, then you have that D core in front of them,,,,McDavid avg 3 points a night wont over come how poor of a back end they put together

you gotta realize that your team pretty much just got a whole new front office/coaching staff. these guys have to see how players will play under a new coaching style. Holland got to look at how his team performs under a new coach and how they react to new management before he starts shipping out player or signing big name UFA's to big contracts. this guy is HOF material, give him a chance

That's the catch 22, its such a bad situation that there is almost no solution. I think you say to McDavid, we are going to be really bad for a couple of years and you are going to have almost no support but after we reset our drafting and development program, we anticipate having a lot of young exciting players for you to lead to the playoffs. Until then though, we need to be realistic, Chiarelli was the worst GM ever and he's made a huge mess.

A little extreme, no? The sky isn't falling, it's just frustrating to see Holland dithering while other teams are improving. Dzingel isn't the be-all, end-all, but Holland has swung and missed at every possible option that could improve the top-6 next year.

And Edmonton doesn't need a few years of drafting / developing to build a supporting cast, they have many of the necessary core pieces in place already.

The pieces Edmonton has that mean anything and are worth keeping are as follows.

McDavid
Draisaitl
Klefbom
Nurse
RNH

Literally every other player on the roster doesn't matter, many absolutely should be moved for anything you can get. Some can't be moved unless you give up a high value asset to make that happen (Lucic). Edmonton's prospects are pretty much non existent, their development program is terrible, their scouting under chiarellie was terrible. The sky isn't falling, it fell a couple of years ago and management had no idea it happened. Holland now has to figure out how to flip 80% of his roster with serviceable NHL players to support his young stars and has no cap space or high value prospects to do so. Edmonton is in the worst position in the entire league. McDavid and Draisaitl can score 200 points and the team would still miss the playoffs since the bottom 2 lines are not worthy of playing on any team in the league.

This is exactly what the Oilers need - complimentary pieces. They have many of the core pieces in place already - 2 superstars on the 1st line, one of the best 2C's in the game, good young defenders, etc. Zero scoring depth killed them last year, so it makes sense to bring in another guy who can score, right? Signing more 4th line guys on top of the 4th line guys we already have doesn't make a lot of sense. We now have about 15 guys who can play 4th line + 3 guys who would be 1st line on most teams. And one prospect that probably ends up on the 3rd line this year.

Yay.

This I cannot agree with. Edmonton has some very good prospects in the pipeline - mostly on defense, but a few decent forwards as well.




So... the answer is to go out and sign more guys who aren't worthy of playing on any team in the league? Because that's what Holland has done, and that's why I'm frustrated.

This I can agree with!

They do not need complimentary pieces...they have a terrible bottom 6, terrible goalies, and a bad D core. Fix that first