Historically speaking, how Bad are the current Oilers?

by Bruce McCurdy on Jan 8, 2010 5:20 PM MST in History

Here in graphical form is the season-to-season NHL history of the Edmonton Oilers. Since the old standard of .500 no longer means what it used to in Gary Bettman's NHL, I have expressed Oilers points as a percentage of league average; for example, through 44 games in 2009-10, Oilers have a Pts% of .420 against a league average Pts% of .563, so they currently rank in the 75th percentile. This is not quite as bad as the 1992-93 Oilers (72nd percentile) in terms of relative badness; that said the current season has a long way to go and current trends are, shall we say, not promising.

The larger squares represent seasons where the team made the playoffs; the smaller diamonds are missed playoffs. With another idle postseason all but written in stone -- Oilers would have to go something like 32-6 to overtake the pace of the 8th place team -- the obvious comparison of the current team is with the 1992-96 Oilers, who also missed the playoffs four consecutive seasons.

One similarity is that both the 1992 conference finalists and 2006 Stanley Cup finalists fell off a cliff the following season. A key difference, however, is that the '92-96 teams showed steady if incrementally small improvement year over year before finally making a push in the fifth year. The current Oilers, on the other hand, made something of a resurgence in 2007-08 with the improbable and ultimately unsuccessful stretch drive, only to fall back a little the next year and a whole lot this year. Incremental improvement would be a whole lot easier to accept than what has happened over the past season and a half.

One area where the '09-10 Oil is poised to make history is its overall finish in the standings. Currently the Oilers rank 29th in the 30-team NHL, second-worst in the league. In their previous proud 30-year, 29-season NHL history, the Oilers have never once finished in the bottom 3 of the league.

Moreover, the Oilers have never once "earned" on their own (de)merits, a draft pick that was even in the top 5 in the NHL. The only time Oilers ever drafted top 5 was when they picked up a 4th overall selection from Winnipeg in the Dave Manson for Boris Mironov, Mats Lindgren and the first rounder from the second-last place Jets. The Oilers bottomed out at fourth-last that same year of 1993-94, however both picks got bumped down two spots due to expansion.

After the jump in tabular form is the Oilers finish, draft order, and what they did with their first round picks since 1979. Significant players are shown in bold, with the jury still out on the last few seasons. Note: you may have to set your screen on the "wide" setting (located to the immediate right on this page) to read the right hand column.

Season	Pts%/	Finish	Proj.	Actual	Player	Additional first rounders
	NHL		Draft #	Draft #
				21	Kevin Lowe	Last pick courtesy NHL
1979-80	86%	16/21	6	6	Paul Coffey
1980-81	93%	14/21	8	8	Grant Fuhr
1981-82	139%	2/21	20	20	Jim Playfair
1982-83	133%	3/21	19	19	Jeff Beukeboom
1983-84	149%	1/21	21	21	Selmar Odelein
1984-85	136%	2/21	20	20	Scott Metcalfe
1985-86	149%	1/21	21	21	Kim Issel
1986-87	133%	1/21	21	21	Peter Soberlak
1987-88	124%	3/21	19	19	Francois Leroux
1988-89	105%	7/21	15	15	Jason Soules
1989-90	113%	5/21	17	17	Scott Allison
1990-91	100%	11/21	11	12*	Tyler Wright	20. Martin Rucinsky (Gretzky)
1991-92	103%	12/22	11	13**	Joe Hulbig
1992-93	71%	20/24	5	7**	Jason Arnott	16. Nick Stajduhar (Gretzky)
1993-94	76%	23/26	4	6**	Ryan Smyth	4. Jason Bonsignore (Manson)
1994-95	79%	22/26	5	6L	Steve Kelly
1995-96	83%	21/26	6	6	Boyd Devereaux
1996-97	99%	13/26	14	14	Michel Riesen
1997-98	98%	15/26	12	13*	Michael Henrich
1998-99	95%	16/27	12	13*	Jani Rita
1999-00	102%	14/28	15	17**
2000-01	108%	12/30	19	(19)	[traded up]	13. Ales Hemsky (Guerin)
2001-02	107%	16/30	15	15	Jesse Niinimaki
2002-03	105%	14/30	17	22	[traded down]	22. Marc Pouliot (+ JFJ)
2003-04	103%	17/30	14	14	Devan Dubnyk	25 Rob Schremp (Comrie)
2004-05				25	Andrew Cogliano
2005-06	104%	14/30	17	(17)	[Trevor Lewis]	(Roloson trade)
2006-07	77.7%	25/30	6	6	Sam Gagner	15. A.Plante (Smyth); 21. R.Nash (Pronger)
2007-08	96.8%	19/30	12	12	(Tyler Myers)	22. Jordan Eberle (Pronger)
2008-09	93.0%	21/30	10	10	M.Paajarvi-Svensson
2009-10	74.7%	29/30	2	?

* - lost one position to expansion team

** - lost two positions to two expansion teams

L - lost position due to draft lottery

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They’re going to be the worst team in franchise history and not get rewarded with a first overall.

Editor of The Copper & Blue, and leader of The Cult Of Hartikainen.

by Derek Zona on Jan 8, 2010 11:53 PM MST reply actions

Excellent work Bruce. What’s the most shocking to me is that the last two seasons weren’t as bad as I thought. lol But seriously, this one sure is a stinker.

I hope the Oilers management can see it for what it is and start to take matters to right the ship as soon as possible. I mean, don’t save this season, cause it’s done. Fix the team for the future. Abandon this season and just clean this team up and help turn it around. We’ve all given lots of suggestions how to do it… up to management to pull the trigger on it.

Visit www.puttingonthefoil.com

by Racki on Jan 9, 2010 12:46 AM MST reply actions

Keep in mind that this looks only at point totals. I’m of the mind that the team in 2007-08 was quite a bit worse than the team in 2008-09 despite the former earning more standings points. I think the kind of gradual progression Bruce was hoping for was actually happening until this season where they’ve clearly regressed. The four main causes for this, in my opinion, are bad off-season decision, injuries, bad coaching and underperformance from some key players. In that order.

by Scott Reynolds on Jan 9, 2010 10:03 AM MST up reply actions

Scott: Yes of course. I spent more time on the graph and the table than I did on writing the piece, which in retrospect I wish I had done better. Good point about 2007-08 being a few points off of where it “should” be on the curve; that one data point may be the biggest outlier among all the complete seasons in terms of measuring strength of team. Moreover, 2006-07 was probably an outlier the other way; that team was hovering just outside the playoff cutline with 20 games to go.

That said, 2007-08 was still a subpar season, below the NHL average points and out of the playoffs. It raised expectations unrealistically, and I agree with you that it probably belonged within a steady progression as you point out. Steady until the ski jump that has been 2009-10, that is.

At a guess the current (half-)season may be the biggest outlier of all in terms of strength of team. I would list the causes in a slightly different order, with injuries / illness / underperformance all kind of lumped together at the top. But I wasn’t happy with off-season decisions either, which as usual have blown up in management’s faces. Every year we buy an expensive veteran — Souray, Visnovsky, Khabibulin — and the guy never survives his first season in Edmonton. Which is partly bad luck, but only partly.

Writer for The Copper & Blue and primary shareholder of Zorg Industries

"Never be ashamed of who you are" -- Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg

by Bruce McCurdy on Jan 9, 2010 11:17 AM MST up reply actions

Good points Bruce. I wasn’t at all trying to diminish what you’ve done here. It’s a really interesting chart, especially in the early section. There’s a pretty steep drop the year after Gretzky’s traded and then again after the 1991-92 season. I would have expected it the year after Messier was traded but they seem to have weathered that storm alright at first. They couldn’t manage after Vincent Damphousse and Joe Murphy. That Damphousse trade was especially terrible.

As for this season, I’m not sure it’s such a big outlier based on talent but I didn’t believe the team was very good at the start of the year.

by Scott Reynolds on Jan 9, 2010 12:00 PM MST up reply actions

You’re right, the early part of the chart is the best. :) 7 top-3 finishes in a row. Since then, a whole lot of mediocrity and a fair bit of less than that, but never before now at least, a collapse into the bottom 3 in the league. The team is always just competitive enough to play their way out of a lottery position. Same goes for most of the Canadian teams; I wonder if there are market forces at play, with so much attention and pressure on the local team that they can’t just stink their way to last place in peace and quiet like a team in Long Island or Tampa can. Food for thought, anyway.

For sure, losing to advantage runs against the grain with this organization, and I respect that even as the “last shall be first” system pisses me off.

They couldn’t manage after Vincent Damphousse and Joe Murphy.

And here I thought it was the departure of Kevin Lowe that precipitated that precipitous decline. :)

Writer for The Copper & Blue and primary shareholder of Zorg Industries

"Never be ashamed of who you are" -- Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg

by Bruce McCurdy on Jan 9, 2010 12:18 PM MST up reply actions

That Damphousse trade was especially terrible.

Especially since he was a crucial part of Montreal’s Stanley Cup win the very next year. Why would you trade that kind of talent for a bunch of spare parts?

SNN Sports - A theoretical Oilers blog (i.e. theoretically, I write stuff there). Link now 100% less broken.

by Doogie2K on Jan 10, 2010 9:36 AM MST up reply actions

Spare parts be damned. We effectively traded Vinny for Shame Corson, my least favourite Oiler of all time. Certainly the worst captain the team has ever had, and it’s (still!) not close.

The team only began to turn it around when Corson left town three long years later. It was a somewhat complicated, two-part transaction in which STL signed Corson as a free agent, giving up two picks to Oilers as compensation, then the Oil traded the picks back to STL in return for Curtis Joseph and Mike Grier. Or as I called it at the time, a “three-for-zero trade … we got CuJo, got Grier, and got rid of Corson.”

Writer for The Copper & Blue and primary shareholder of Zorg Industries

"Never be ashamed of who you are" -- Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg

by Bruce McCurdy on Jan 10, 2010 2:20 PM MST up reply actions

The team only began to turn it around when Corson left town three long years later. It was a somewhat complicated, two-part transaction in which STL signed Corson as a free agent, giving up two picks to Oilers as compensation, then the Oil traded the picks back to STL in return for Curtis Joseph and Mike Grier. Or as I called it at the time, a "three-for-zero trade … we got CuJo, got Grier, and got rid of Corson."

Best trade ever!

Editor of The Copper & Blue, and leader of The Cult Of Hartikainen.

by Derek Zona on Jan 10, 2010 4:19 PM MST up reply actions

Too bad we didn’t see much of that Glen Sather in my lifetime.

You know, I was in a concession line with him a couple of years ago when I was at the U18 Red & White game watching Gagner (little did I know…). I got so starstruck I had to go back to my seat and not buy a hot dog. =S

SNN Sports - A theoretical Oilers blog (i.e. theoretically, I write stuff there). Link now 100% less broken.

by Doogie2K on Jan 10, 2010 10:37 PM MST up reply actions

Best trade ever!

No argument here.

The only trade that was arguably better from an Oiler perspective was acquiring Peter Driscoll, Ed Mio, and Wayne Gretzky for cash. But in our time in the NHL, the riddance of Corson was awesome: changed the team culture, acquired a star goalie and a key role player all in one go.

Writer for The Copper & Blue and primary shareholder of Zorg Industries

"Never be ashamed of who you are" -- Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg

by Bruce McCurdy on Jan 11, 2010 12:04 AM MST up reply actions

Bruce, how does this season’s GF compare to the worst of the worst GF?

Editor of The Copper & Blue, and leader of The Cult Of Hartikainen.

by Derek Zona on Jan 9, 2010 1:24 PM MST reply actions

Funny thing, I’ve just been looking at that very thing, working on a follow-up post.

GF isn’t really the issue, it’s currently at 97% of NHL average, though dropping fast. They were far worse in the “fall off a cliff” seasons of ’92-93 (79%) and ’06-07 (81%). GA is a much greater concern. More to come.

Writer for The Copper & Blue and primary shareholder of Zorg Industries

"Never be ashamed of who you are" -- Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg

by Bruce McCurdy on Jan 9, 2010 2:10 PM MST up reply actions

Comments For This Post Are Closed

Northwest Standings

	GP	W	L	OTL	PT
Vancouver Nucks Misconduct	54	34	15	5	73
Colorado Mile High Hockey	56	28	25	3	59
Minnesota Hockey Wilderness	54	25	21	8	58
Calgary Matchsticks and Gasoline	55	25	22	8	58
Edmonton The Copper & Blue	54	21	28	5	47

(updated 2.11.2012 at 6:02 AM MST)

22 - 28 - 5

Streak: Won 1

Oilers Schedule

Next 5 Games

Toronto Pension Plan Puppets	Wed 02/15	8:00 PM MST
Colorado Mile High Hockey	Fri 02/17	7:30 PM MST
Vancouver Nucks Misconduct	Sun 02/19	7:00 PM MST
@ Calgary Matchsticks and Gasoline	Tue 02/21	7:00 PM MST
Philadelphia Broad Street Hockey	Thu 02/23	7:30 PM MST

Last 5 Games

@ Ottawa Silver Seven	Sat 02/11	OT - W 4 - 3
@ Detroit Winging It In Motown	Wed 02/08	L 2 - 4
@ Toronto Pension Plan Puppets	Mon 02/06	L 3 - 6
Detroit Winging It In Motown	Sat 02/04	SO - W 5 - 4
Chicago Second City Hockey	Thu 02/02	W 8 - 4