2011-12 Edmonton Oilers' Final NHLE - The Defense Has No Offense

The final month of the season was filled with measured good news:

Oscar Klefbom finally tallied a point. But the bad news is that he's tallied just 4 points in 56 career SEL games. Travis Ewanyk made his debut after recovering from a shoulder injury, but played just 11 games for the Edmonton Oil Kings. Taylor Fedun made meaningful strides in his recovery, but it's possible that he's the best hope for offense from the blue in the future.

For a complete look at all of the Oilers' prospects and their NHL numbers, we can use Gabriel Desjardins' NHL Equivalency. Gabe's methodologies are described on his translations page:

One way to evaluate the difficulty of one league relative to another is to examine the relative performance of players who have played in both leagues. Players rarely play significant time in two leagues in the same year, but they often play in one league in one year and in another the next. As long as a player’s skill level is approximately constant over this two year period, the ratio of his performance in each league can be used to estimate the relative difficulty of the two leagues.

After the jump is the full list of skating prospects with their NHL Equivalency and full season projections.

• With all of the best recent draft picks in the NHL, the forward group is slightly lacking. While Omark can be counted on for 40 points a season, injuries and mismanagement burned this season, likely his last in the Edmonton organization.
• Rieder had an excellent season in the OHL, and outside of the banished Omark, seems like the only possible impact forward in the group right now.
• I say "right now" because there remains hope that Pitlick and Hamilton will figure the professional game out some time this summer, and they'll get a second chance because of their relatively young age compared to their draft peers.
• Barring a surprise move by Toni Rajala, the Oilers aren't likely to add any forwards from the prospect pool to the AHL team next season.

• For a group being lauded as the next coming, specifically in relation to replacing Tom Gilbert (or Jeff Petry as he replaces Tom Gilbert), there's no offense to speak of. Both Petry and Gilbert were just short of .5 NHLE P/G in their NCAA careers - no one in the above group is better than .27 NHLE P/G. There may be some defensive gems in the group, but at this point it's stretch to project any of them as offensive threats.
• Like Pitlick and Hamilton there is home for Klefbom and Simpson, both youngsters playing difficult competition where maturity might be the key to becoming a threat.