I'd take Pitlick in the team. He's still a bottom-6 NHL level player.

Maybe over Paajarvi, but I do like how Paajarvi played last year. Could put him as an extra ahead of Yamamoto at this point I guess.

This teams actually good ….. oh what could have been

This would be great if was the 1980's....but scoring A LOT of goals in today's NHL isn't that relevant. Only five Stanley Cup winning teams have finished in the top 5 for goals for over the last 10 years.

The key to the list above is that the Oilers haven't drafted a single TOP PAIRING defenseman over the course of the last 15 years. The only way the Oilers will be better is if they significantly improve their defense by bringing in Top 4 talent OR developing some of their more recent draft picks.

Well, 5 out of 10 being top 5 in scoring shows it does work sometimes, actually.

But I agree, the defensive drafting has never been amazing. The point here was just to show that the drafting overall (although this team would be screwed if Dubnyk went down) has been okay for the Oil in the post-lockout era. Yes, a couple of high ranked busts, but this happens often in drafts, the Oil just happened to suffer the consequences twice for top 5 picks alongside some bad development.

As for the top pairing Dman, sure there is no top 20 Dman in the league here, but the top 4 are definitely an average group, and Jones and Bouchard project as top 4 soon. So overall this team, in a year or two, would be in great shape.

And the good news is (for the actual Oilers team), finally they have arguably a top 5 in the league crop of defensive prospects. So at least they have figured that out. In 2 years we'll find out if they have finally figured out how to develop under Holland if Bouchard, Jones, Lagesson and Bear are deservingly on the team, and Samorukov and Broberg are pushing.

But yes, unlikely to be a cup winner, but definitely playoff worthy and with nearly 7mil in cap space...amazing to see how many bad choices were made.