Old Devils Thread (Lock 'er up please)

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At some point, I have a feeling that Cory is going to land on LTIR

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Has this team finally gotten it? Definitely playing a ton better

Gusev is still a black home at 5 on 5 though. He cannot be issued with either Hughes or bratt at any point. He completely drags then down. If he plays, he needs to be in the fourth line

[beekay414]

1 hour ago, Forge said:

Has this team finally gotten it? Definitely playing a ton better

I don't know if we've "gotten" it but we really only had one way to go and that was up. We were damn near at rock bottom.

[Forge]

1 minute ago, beekay414 said:

I don't know if we've "gotten" it but we really only had one way to go and that was up. We were damn near at rock bottom.

Damn it was ugly. We are also still an unmitigated disaster in overtime. I can't figure out why. We have skill that should play extremely well there

[beekay414]

5 minutes ago, Forge said:

Damn it was ugly. We are also still an unmitigated disaster in overtime. I can't figure out why. We have skill that should play extremely well there

Who knows. I'm going to blame the system until Hynes is canned. It doesn't make sense with how much we've struggled so far with the talent we have on the roster. He gets the brunt of the blame from me. 

[flyers0909]

Who is Hughes playing with and why did he play 9 minutes at ES last night, lowest on the team?  Is he playing with Gusev?  I haven't been able to catch any games but just metric wise when Gusev isn't in the lineup he's strung together a few really good games.  When Gusev is in his metrics have been terrible, just wondering if he's playing with Gusev.

They've played 23 minutes together and Jack is 36CF%/30xGF%
119 minutes apart, 50CF%/58xGF%

 

 

[Forge]

42 minutes ago, flyers0909 said:

Who is Hughes playing with and why did he play 9 minutes at ES last night, lowest on the team?  Is he playing with Gusev?  I haven't been able to catch any games but just metric wise when Gusev isn't in the lineup he's strung together a few really good games.  When Gusev is in his metrics have been terrible, just wondering if he's playing with Gusev.

They've played 23 minutes together and Jack is 36CF%/30xGF%
119 minutes apart, 50CF%/58xGF%

 

 

Basically, Gusev sucks the life out of anyone he plays with 5x5. Like, horrific. You can check Bratts' stats and you'll see something similar when he's with or without gusev. 

Gusev has a role, but it should largely be 4th line + PP time + shootout. He isn't ready to play the true time on the 5x5 right now. 

So, the best results that we have seen (in my opinion) is when Hughes with with Palms + Hall on the top line, with Nico on the second line with Bratt and Zacha. Small sample size (like 3 or 4 games before Bratt got hurt), but that second line in particular was beastly when together (like 60-70% CF each of those games). 

Last night, Hughes was paired with Gusev (Bratt is hurt) 

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Hynes needs to have someone monitoring the analytics on who is better than who. It's unreal that he's put Hughes with Gusev again. It doesn't take a rocket scientist. There are two people you can't play Gusev with right now - Hughes and Bratt. Period. You can't do it. 

It's annoying that he continues to do it anyway. 

It's also kind of painful that Tennyson is legitimately probably one of our six best. 

[beekay414]

Hughes may already be our best player. 

[Forge]

1 hour ago, beekay414 said:

Hughes may already be our best player. 

He looks special man. It took a couple of games...but hot damn. And he's going to get better. 

Tennyson got absolutely abused twice tonight if you get a chance to watch the highlights. We need to figure something out there. Its weird when you can see your goalie gave up 5 goals think that the goalie didn't play bad. That's how bad players broke down in front of him a few times. Calgary basically just ran us off the ice tonight. Even when they were trailing, they were basically controlling the ice. 

[Forge]

I honestly don't remember a time where or situation, in any of the sports I follow with favorite teams, where I was so hopeful and had the dreams crushed this early. Like, we are 15 games into the season and it's seriously over. That's rough. I thought we were going to be a legit middle tier playoff team this year. 

[Canadian Saint]

23 hours ago, Forge said:

I honestly don't remember a time where or situation, in any of the sports I follow with favorite teams, where I was so hopeful and had the dreams crushed this early. Like, we are 15 games into the season and it's seriously over. That's rough. I thought we were going to be a legit middle tier playoff team this year. 

If you don't mind me saying, I actually think the year you made the playoffs was a bit of a curse. I think it accelerated your timeline in terms of becoming a playoff team. The runoff from that is Shero was aggressive in the offseason for some veteran pieces that aren't looking too hot right now. Just some observation after watching your game:

- Is Greene a good captain? During the Oilers Decade of Darkness, we really didn't have good leaders and it showed. Before McDavid, getting a 60 minute effort out of the team was miserable. When McDavid was captain, we still weren't 100% focused, but it was more "team quit on coach" rather than lack of effort. Our players play for McDavid and rightfully so.

- I know you guys have #firehynes in the title, but how do you like him? His win % in the NHL is very suspect, and even though a lot of those seasons were when you guys were rebuilding, it seems your play hasn't improved even though the talent has. Coaching is paramount to any success in the NHL. The Oilers had talented player after talented player go bust because we had incompetent front office and coaches who were the wrong fit. Another example? Trotz and the Isles. They lost Tavares, gained Trotz, and now are playing some great hockey. If Bruce Boudreau gets fired from Minny, he's the guy I'd target for you guys. Offensive coach who will work wonders for your young talent.

- I know you guys picked up Subban, but overall I don't really like your defense. Greene to me still seems like your best D-man. Which is alarming at his age. Severson doesn't strike me as a guy who has consistently performed. Subban has his warts and seems like he's slowing down (with a massive deal). What happened to Vatanen?

Going forward, I think you'll be fine. Trading Hall for you guys is going to be a positive, especially if it means getting more young pieces in return (my prediction is the Avs Timmins +). I know Gusev has struggled a little, but he's a supremely talented winger who I think will come good around 40-50 game mark. Players coming from the KHL take some time to adjust, especially true on a young team. Biggest thing for you is the next head coach. Oilers shot themselves in the foot a ton by doing it wrong over and over and over again.

Hope you don't mind me popping in and giving my $0.02.

[Forge]

16 minutes ago, Canadian Saint said:

If you don't mind me saying, I actually think the year you made the playoffs was a bit of a curse. I think it accelerated your timeline in terms of becoming a playoff team. The runoff from that is Shero was aggressive in the offseason for some veteran pieces that aren't looking too hot right now. Just some observation after watching your game:

 

I'm starting to think that as well. It was such a herculean effort by Hall that year (he totally earned the MVP), but it really skewed what the team looked like, in my opinion. 

17 minutes ago, Canadian Saint said:

- Is Greene a good captain? During the Oilers Decade of Darkness, we really didn't have good leaders and it showed. Before McDavid, getting a 60 minute effort out of the team was miserable. When McDavid was captain, we still weren't 100% focused, but it was more "team quit on coach" rather than lack of effort. Our players play for McDavid and rightfully so.

You know, I don't know. It's hard to say because good captains come in such different shapes and sizes. Stevens and Messier are considered two great ones, yet they did it very different ways. Stevens was more of just a presence, didn't really speak. Messier was somewhat boisterous. The team is mentally fragile in my opinion, but I don't know if that's a captain issue, a staff issue, or just a player issue in general, so hard to say. I haven't heard anything bad about him being a bad captain, but I don't think that you hear much about that. 

18 minutes ago, Canadian Saint said:

I know you guys have #firehynes in the title, but how do you like him? His win % in the NHL is very suspect, and even though a lot of those seasons were when you guys were rebuilding, it seems your play hasn't improved even though the talent has. Coaching is paramount to any success in the NHL. The Oilers had talented player after talented player go bust because we had incompetent front office and coaches who were the wrong fit. Another example? Trotz and the Isles. They lost Tavares, gained Trotz, and now are playing some great hockey. If Bruce Boudreau gets fired from Minny, he's the guy I'd target for you guys. Offensive coach who will work wonders for your young talent.

Oh, he's freaking horrible. He's horrific at adjustments, and his line adjustments are ludicrous. If you go back a few pages, you'll here me talking about how the Nico - Bratt - Zacha line was really working well and they should be kept together. They got about 3-4 games together, had great CF% (all above 60%, some above 70% in those games) and xGF% percentages in all the games they played together. They were seriously pretty dominant. Small sample, but why mess with it when it's working? Then Bratt got hurt, missed a game or two, and when he came back, he didn't put them back together. He had Bratt runnign with the 4th line earlier in the season, and even gave him a healthy scratch in one game. Keep in mind that skating and offensively, bratt is probably one of our top 4 best offensive players. You can't put Gusev with Hughes or Bratt, yet Hynes continues to do so (they get caved in, way too easily, as you would expect). One of his favorite lines in overtime is Hughes + Bratt. It's asinine. He has way too much devotion to his 4th line grinders and guys like Wayne Simmonds - it's not atypical for them to see more ice time than the skilled guys like Hughes / Bratt / etc. For some reason he puts Miles Wood in the top 6 at times (Wood has a place as a solid bottom three type guy, but he's literally just a fast straight line skater with no additional skills except maybe "grit"). Powerplay has been terrible, yet its the same design, the same players on PP1 each time. Any time he does make adjustments, they just don't make sense. When things are working, he tweaks them (the most infamous this year being game one, where we went up 4-0, gave up a late goal in the second, he started tweaking the lines for some reason, and we lost 5-4), but wont' touch them if we are getting crushed. Problem is, for some reason, Shero loves him. It's frustrating. 

25 minutes ago, Canadian Saint said:

I know you guys picked up Subban, but overall I don't really like your defense. Greene to me still seems like your best D-man. Which is alarming at his age. Severson doesn't strike me as a guy who has consistently performed. Subban has his warts and seems like he's slowing down (with a massive deal). What happened to Vatanen?

Vats has probably been our best all around defenseman, honestly. He's had a solid bounce back year. But he's a good second pairing guy, and he still suffers from the injury bug now and again. I actually don't have a ton of complaints about him this year. He's done largely what I expected (and has even taken the point role on PP1 from Subban). Severson is a RW masquerading as a defenseman. That's note the worst thing (his skating, offensive capabilities are actually fine, and he's signed very reasonable for several more years), but you can't have that type of guy be your first or second pairing, you know? Far too much of a defensive liability. Breakdowns a ton. He has to be paired with someone extremely strong defensively...which is something that we don't have. Greene is the best when it comes to positioning, assignment, role, etc. The problem is, he's old. It just sucks. He doesn't have the attributes to play the way he's built to play. He's not big, he's not a good skater any more, he's not skillful. He's a guy that could help some teams out as a player (still also a very good PKer). Butcher is having the worst year of his career, so that sucks. Some of it is to be expected (the team has slowly moved him into less of an offensive role), and some of that may be team related. He's always had good advanced numbers, so I'm not willing to say that he's a disaster. May just require a change around him. 

Subban, sadly, has largely been a disaster. He's had horrific breakdowns defensively pretty consistently. Maybe more than any other defender, which is mind boggling on a team with Damon Severson. We talked about acquiring him last year, and I'm pretty sure that I said I didn't want to do it, but I get what they did given what it took to get him. It was probably worth it. Still, that has been a disaster. 

31 minutes ago, Canadian Saint said:

Going forward, I think you'll be fine. Trading Hall for you guys is going to be a positive, especially if it means getting more young pieces in return (my prediction is the Avs Timmins +). I know Gusev has struggled a little, but he's a supremely talented winger who I think will come good around 40-50 game mark. Players coming from the KHL take some time to adjust, especially true on a young team. Biggest thing for you is the next head coach. Oilers shot themselves in the foot a ton by doing it wrong over and over and over again.

Yeah, we need to move on from Hall. I don't want him to some big dollar, 8 year deal. He's clearly frustrated with the team (and the fans), and frankly, I'm not sure what we are losing here. We've been shut out in 3 out of 15 games, have scored 2 or fewer in half of our games. Is moving Hall really going to be that detrimental to an offense that is already not good? Most devils fans think that we are still going to get a haul, which I don't see at all. If he's a rental, a 1st + B grade prospect is what I would expect. If we ship him to someone who can lock him down, we will get more, no doubt, but I don't think it will be a ton more. It'll be a slightly upgraded Mark Stone deal. I floated the notion of a Nino + Jake Bean deal, which I would be completely okay with from the Canes. Hall has injury problems, and given his age, I'd just shy away at this point. The team just needs to be reconfigured, to be honest. This mash up just isn't working. All these offensive pieces, and the offense is bad. No defense. No goalie. It's a little ugly. 

35 minutes ago, Canadian Saint said:

Hope you don't mind me popping in and giving my $0.02.

We are always happy to talk some hockey! Drop in any time! I'm almost always in here LOL

[beekay414]

I'd be in here more if I didn't despise the coach and already threw away the season lol

[Forge]

Zacha being mixed on the fourth line. Makes sense.