Monday Mailbag – Thoughts on Bob Nicholson’s press conference?

Hello, hello! Welcome, my friends, to yet another edition of the Monday mailbag, the weekly column where we take your questions and turn them into a little bit of free Oilers education. This week, we look at Bob Nicholson’s press conference, Chiarelli’s replacement, and what to expect from the final 30 games. If you want in on next week’s mailbag, just fire me an email at baggedmilk@oilersnation.com or hit me up on Twitter at @jsbmbaggedmilk. Until then, I encourage you to sit back, relax, and waste a few minutes of company time. Have a good week, everybody.

While I generally favor experience, that doesn’t guarantee success, as we’ve just seen with Chiarelli. I like Kelly McCrimmon and Bill Guerin for what they’ve done as assistant GM’s but I want somebody who insists on running the show without interference and I’m not sure they would feel comfortable demanding that. I’m thinking Mark Hunter or Ron Hextall might be the best bets.

I think they should hire a more experienced hockey person to be the President of Hockey Operations and then go get a young, up and coming GM. Someone who has been sitting as an AGM with a good franchise or someone who has been putting in time in the junior ranks. I don’t want them to hire someone like Dean Lombardi to be their GM. That would feel like Chiarelli 2.0 to me. I’m looking at names like Kelly McCrimmon, Mark Hunter, or Laurence Gillman.

Hopefully, somebody who’s trying to win the 2019 and 2020 Stanley Cup rather than the 2011 Stanley Cup. The league has changed and a lot of teams are getting left behind because they don’t have new voices in their front offices. The Oilers need to do what the Leafs did and get a good mix of old and new school voices in the mix. They need people who know how to navigate the intricacies of the game, finding leadership, dealing with egos, and wheeling and dealing, and they need creative people who can find under-the-radar players with high-quality and effective data. I think it goes beyond just having a good GM. The Oilers have a lot of bad voices in their office right now. Like, think about that comedically-bad Griffin Reinhart deal Chiarelli made. Some idiot told him to do that without having watched Reinhart in the AHL. Why employ people like that? This isn’t a country club.

Last season I thought then Lightning AGM Julien Brisebois or Nashville AGM Paul Fenton would be good bets to take over. They’re general managers now so they’re off the table. I’m unsure. There’s so much talk about Kelly McCrimmon but hasn’t been in the league long, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s been with an expansion franchise which doesn’t seem like the ideal fit for the Oilers. Their ability to evaluate and acquire talent should be key, but I’m not sure how you judge that with a franchise that’s existed for 1.5 seasons. I’d look at Craig Heisinger from Winnipeg, Pat Verbeek from Tampa Bay, and Bill Guerin from Pittsburgh.

My first pick would obviously be Yzerman but I don’t think that’s happening. There are currently a lot of guys to choose from and in my opinion, I wouldn’t mind seeing a guy like Kelly McCrimmon coming in from Vegas. I feel like he’ll have some different insights to bring to the old boys club.

Honestly, I don’t know enough to give an accurate guess or prediction. All I really hope for is that the Oilers actually do a thorough search to find this person and not just settle for the first person they talked to, as was the case with Peter Chiarelli.

I think Nicholson might be part of the problem — Chiarelli was his hire. I can only assume Nicholson was in on the group decision to allow Chiarelli to make that Koskinen deal right before he was dismissed and that’s just awful managing.

I was hoping to hear him come out and say that they need to bring in fresh voices and that the current group didn’t do a good enough job. Instead, he basically just talked about how they need more character and people who get the Oilers way of doing things. I thought the media asked some really good questions and Nicholson did an alright job of answering what he could, but I’m not sure if there’s a rock solid plan in place and that concerns me. All in all, I’m going to judge Nicholson based on what he does in the coming months, not on what he said while behind the podium. The water quote was an incredible gift though.

It was exactly what anybody reasonably should have expected. He came out and spouted a bunch of vague nonsense that appeases the dumb, casual fan. Buzzphrases like CHARACTER IN THE ROOM will get a good chunk of Oilers fans fired up and it’ll distract from the overall problem of having a bunch of incompetent people on the payroll who are years behind in terms of understanding how to be successful in this league.

I don’t think it was great. There was too much talk about character and vague things instead of ownership of the situation, but it’s also unrealistic to expect Nicholson to present exactly what they’re thinking. I think an acknowledgement of the mistake they made in valuing size and toughness over skilled players would have been good and shown they know the problem. Can you say with certainty that the Oilers have absolutely learned what’s wrong after firing Peter Chiarelli? Nicholson’s press conference didn’t suggest that to me.

I didn’t have a lot of expectations going into the presser and with that, I left not feeling any worse. The best part about it was the amazing line about there being something in the water that Nicholson left us with. My favourite part about the pressers is picking apart every individual line Bob has to say and making them into memes.

My first thought, and you can ask anyone at Nation HQ about it, was that we should come out with a shirt that has fun with his “there must be something in the water” quote… and we did.

It allows the management group some time to breathe and format a plan and it also allows Oscar Klefbom more time to get ready for his return without missing games. The rest, specifically the bye week, will help Connor McDavid.

I think it will allow them to sort of reset things and start fresh come February. Given their recent struggles, some time away will be a good thing. Their star players have been logging a lot of minutes so for those guys, the long break is probably much needed. They’ll also have Oscar Klefbom back so that’s a massive boost as well. Now, combining the All-Star Break with their bye-week does create a rather long time between games so hopefully, they’re more rested than rusted when the puck drops Saturday in Philadelphia.

Yes. This is as close to a one-man team you can have in this league. Connor McDavid needs all the rest he can get so he can drag this mess kicking and screaming into the playoffs.

Absolutely. That can’t hurt and the cloud of the general manager isn’t hanging over their heads anymore.

I think it was a good decision. The whole team now has a week to think about the season / or not think about the season – and regroup themselves. I’m hoping that everyone will come in fresh and revitalized after the break ready to kick ass.

I think it was good in the sense that it gave everyone, Connor and Leon aside, a chance to get away from the heat for a little while. By the time they come back, the anger will have subsided enough.

Turning Jordan Eberle into nothing, including cap space that was never used, is the worst because he had a couple cracks at the same deal — Eberle-Strome-Spooner — and never did get it right.

I think his best move was actually going out and getting Cam Talbot. While he’s struggled over the past 18 months, he was a massive reason why they almost made the conference finals in the 2016-17 season. Chiarelli got this team a legit number one goalie, even if it was only for one year, without giving up anything from his roster. I liked that move. For his worst move, you could make an argument for the Hall deal or the Lucic signing, but I’m actually going to go with the Reinhart deal. He gave up two high draft picks in a very deep draft and now, just four years later, the team has nothing to show for it. I know that there was organizational pressure to make that deal, but Chiarelli still signed off on it.

The sequence of dealing two top picks for Reinhart, which was a waste of assets that could have helped shore up the blueline. That led to having to deal Hall for Larsson, which robbed the Oilers of having their Crosby-Malkin one-two punch. His best? Uhhhhh. Finding Maroon or Chiasson, guys who could gel with McDavid nicely, I guess? I don’t know. It was a pretty miserable tenure. I’m not sure if you can find much worse in NHL history.

Best move is signing Connor McDavid to an eight-year extension when so many elite players have opted for five-year deals coming out of their entry-level contracts. Worst move? Trading Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson. That’s a move that set the franchise back years.

I want to say his best move was trading draft picks for Cam Talbot. He was crucial in our 2016-17 playoff run and was a great addition to this city. To feel confident in my answer, I need to see what the Oilers will be trading for him in this coming deadline. His worst move was by far trading the two first round picks for a Griffin Reinhart, no question.

Best move would probably be the original Pat Maroon trade. He moved a fourth rounder and Martin Gernat for Pat Maroon and it worked out beautifully for most of the time he was here. Worst… man, there are some horrible ones. The Eberle trade train is horrible, the Hall for Larsson trade wasn’t enough, the Griffin Reinhart deal was a disaster, the Brandon Manning trade was bad, and we could be here for a while.

They’ll need at least 40 wins and 85 points to get in. Not sure it takes 90 points this year.

If the return of Oscar Klefbom sparks them and brings Mikko Koskinen’s save percentage back up to around 0.925 or 0.930 then I could honestly see the Oilers pushing for the final wild-card spot. It will probably take a record of 21-11, or something around that, to make it. I won’t say it’s likely, but they have the best player in the world and if they get some solid goaltending, I think anything is possible.

They’ll get a big boost having Klefbom back and McDavid is going to go into legend mode. They’ll go 18-12-2 and it’ll be enough to slide them into eighth in the West.

I don’t think so. They’ll make it close but ultimately fall short. 15-15-3.

My positivity and inner-Oiler fan is kicking in here and I’m going to say they WILL sneak into a wild-card spot with a 20-10-2 finishing record purely based on momentum after Chia’s firing. DONT @ ME

With a motivated Connor McDavid, I believe anything is possible so I’m going to say that they go 18-12-2 down the stretch.

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