Peter Chiarelli talks season failure
By baggedmilk
6 years agoWith the Oilers being as bad as they are, Peter Chiarelli was forced to make the rounds to talk about his failures today. Over at 630 CHED, Chiarelli jumped on Oilers Now for a quick Q&A with Bob Stauffer to talk about what’s going on with the hell is going on, and Ryan Rishaug posted a similar interview with the GM over at TSN shortly after. Here, we’ll cover both.
Needless to say, this season has been an absolute disaster for the Edmonton Oilers and their fans and we’ve reached a point where people are demanding answers. When it comes to getting those answers, we probably shouldn’t hold our breath if we’re expecting them to come from the GM. The last time Chiarelli spoke to the media, he didn’t really say much apart from dropping quotes like “general disappointment” and “death by 1000 cuts.”
As a quick note, I combined both interviews into topics of discussion with the embedded Tweets coming from Oilers Now, and the quoted text from TSN. Let’s do the thing.
ON THE SEASON’S FAILURES
As you’d expect from a Peter Chiarelli interview, he tap-danced around question like a master of spin. When it came to the frustration associated with this horrible season, Chiarelli said:
Period of evaluation? Tambellini is that you? On the bright side, a period evaluation hopefully means that he won’t be doing anything stupid, right? Please tell me what that means. Dare to dream?
Wait which area got fixed? Can we start there before moving onto the ever growing list of problems? I don’t have all day, Pete.
ON A POTENTIAL COACHING CHANGE
I think one thing that is interesting about this season is that there are a lot of people angry about the GM and Assistant Coaches, but necessarily with Todd McLellan. For me personally, I don’t think Todd McLellan forgot how to coach since the end of last season, but I can objectively point to bets that Chiarelli made that were completely useless and/or harmful.
When it comes to firing the coach, Chiarelli was consistent in both interviews.
To Rishaug, Chiarelli said more of the same:
“I know there’s been clamouring for a change, and I can understand those concerns, but I believe there’s an element of continuity and stability that’s required here.”
I agree with that, Pete. It’s you that a bunch of us want to go. Sorry for cutting you off. Go ahead.
“We identified someone like Todd and his staff. We hired them and we put them in place. We want to do everything we can to allow these people to succeed.”
So trading away all your skill for lesser players is helping them succeed? Got it.
ON THE ASSISTANT COACHES
“I look at the whole staff, and to me, it’s a collective group.”
All for one, one for all. Okay, I get it.
“The deficiencies that we’re seeing in the special teams, for example the penalty kill, is Jim Johnson’s unit but there is a collective interaction on it.”
From there, Chiarelli goes on about how the whole staff, management included, are involved in some of these decisions and then he rambled on for a minute or so before finally landing on saying he won’t single out any specific coach. There were a lot of words that meant nothing and I’m not going to spend time transcribing them. TL;DR – Coaches aren’t getting fired. NEXT!
ON PLAYER STRUGGLES
I thought Rishaug asked an interesting question about how much blame should be heaped on the players.
“It’s not on the players entirely. When there’s a large group of them, it’s natural to look at the coach and the coaches, but it’s not always the case. Sometimes a lot of things happen at once for really no reason. I’ve seen it happen before.”
So… Kinda like when he traded away a bunch of skill and the Bruins were left in shambles. Same same. Am I salty? No, why?
“You look at coming of injuries. You look at certain pressures for whatever reasons, whether they’re contract reasons, whether they’re expectation reasons. You look at youth. You look at a number of things, but you know what, they all happened at the same time.”
So basically you’re talking about Sekera, Caggiula/Slepyshev, and Leon Draisaitl without saying their names? Gotcha. Clearly, Rishaug picked up on that too as his next question was about Draisaitl’s first year into his new contract:
“I think certainly the contract has weighed on him. Without question. I see it in his game, I see it in his body language. I think it has. He’s showing fits and flashes but it’s certainly a weight on him.”
Well, hopefully, Leon can figure it out soon because that contract isn’t getting any cheaper and it goes on for a while. Here’s hoping.
ON FEELING THE HEAT
One of the questions I was waiting for somebody to ask (thank you, Rishaug) was whether or not Chiarelli himself was feeling the heat… which he should be.
“I do feel the heat and justifiably. Our fans deserve better.”
FINALLY SOME OWNERSHIP OF WHAT’S GOING WRONG! Did he throw himself under the bus as I imagined in my wonderful daydreaming sessions about a brighter Oilers future? No. It’s a small win but I’ll take it. What else?
“I have the big picture job and I have to be careful about reacting rationally. I have to be careful about tunnel vision on certain things and it’s. Your instinct based on when it’s going like this is that you have to make a change. There has to be a level of resistance to that.”
I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to hear that a GM may not make any major moves. I don’t trust Chiarelli’s ability to win a trade outside of a minor deal, and so the idea of him being patient is music to my ears. Here’s hoping that patience lasts long enough for him to be served his walking papers. Dare to dream?
WASTING THE LAST YEAR OF MCDAVID’S ELC
I remember before the season started and Chiarelli said that he was pretty satisfied with his roster. I was concerned that there were a lot of guys that couldn’t take a step backwards for this thing to work, and, unfortunately, taking a step back was exactly what happened. To his credit, I understand why Chia would want to see what he has with his internal options, but those failed bets were made worse by not having any other options. Even more horrifying was the fact that the Oilers still have plenty of cap space to spend and did absolutely nothing with it. He could have helped himself our a lot by using some of that cap space but he refused to do so. Why? The answer got strange:
“That’s tough. I know we have cap room, but that’s tough to look back and say should we I have done anything differently. Are there guys maybe underperform that we projected otherwise? Maybe a little bit. That’s a tough question. It’s hard to load up just on one year and not have that trickle into subsequent years.”
Okay, so you’re going to throw Caggiula and Slepyshev under the bus without naming them. I get that. But what about the cap space? What’s going on with that? That’s when Rishaug asked whether or not he regretted the Eberle trade:
“Again, you look back… umm… I think what happens is… well I know what happened a bit of that deal was fending off a potential offersheet. We had to be in a position of strength to fend off an offer sheet.”
Are you being serious right now? How much do you think someone was going to offer Draisaitl that you didn’t go ahead and do yourself? Not to mention, when was the last time someone dropped an OS on anyone of significance? Shea Weber? Maybe? Are you happy with Strome, at least?
“Ryan (Strome) certainly hasn’t performed as we had expected, but in retrospect I don’t know if I would have done anything different there.”
HASN’T PERFORMED AS YOU EXPECTED? Do you not know about HockeyDB? Did you not look at his career numbers? Good Gord, that’s a bad answer. I don’t blame Strome here, but I certainly do blame Chiarelli for apparently not knowing what he was getting. C’MON!
ON FEELING GOOD ABOUT HIS BAD BETS
One of the things I complained a lot about during the summer was that Peter Chiarelli seemed to think his players would develop in a straight line. Guys like Caggiula, Slepyshev, and Benning have all struggled and those were some of the young players that Chiarelli bet on having huge years. In fact, he needed them to have big years.
I agree that the team probably isn’t as bad as the standings say they are, but moral victories don’t pay the bills anymore. Something needs to happen here, and I think it starts at the top. When asked about changes, Chiarelli said there would be changes but didn’t know how many changes or what kind of changes – it was weird.
“Well… I don’t know about significant changes. We didn’t make significant changes and look where we are now.”
Eberle for Strome. No experienced defender to fill in Sekera’s void. The pointless buyout of Pouliot. Lost Hendricks. Lost Pitlick. But yeah, aside from those five guys there wasn’t much change at all. Only, 21% of the roster.
“There has to be a lot more assessment and evaluation.”
Ahhh the Tambellini approach. Ol’ Dithers 2.0. I don’t mind that. And just like Tambellini I hope that a different GM gets to make the decisions based on the assessment. Anyway… Are guys going to get moved or not?
“There’s going to be change, without question. But significant change? I’m not in a position to tell you that.”
Oh good. I can’t wait to see how you punch yourself in the face this time around. Happy day. Having the Oilers be sellers again should be fun.
“I’m going to wait a little bit (before deciding on that). We’ve got our pro meetings coming up next week, so we have a few games coming up here before that. We’ll see where we are going into the break and then we’ll have to make a decision.”
Cool. I look forward to finding out what you’ll learn after a few more losses. Maybe, it’s that you’ll be starting the break with a whole bunch of free time on your hands.
THE WRAP…
When I found out that Chiarelli was going to be answering questions again today, I was really curious to see what the tone of the interviews would be like and how Chiarelli would respond. As per tradition, Peter Chiarelli is a Jedi in terms of sidestepping any question like he’s Neo in the Matrix so I didn’t really expect to learn much. Needless to say, today’s round of press was another chapter where Chiarelli said a lot of words without really giving up much information. Not that we should have expected much else.
Source: Oilers Now, 630 CHED Radio, 1/08/2017, 12:15pm MST
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