Oilers, Leafs Choke: Tanks For The Memories

There is a popular notion in the NHL— actually, almost any league that uses a draft system— that suggests the route to the Stanley Cup is via a prolonged period of tanking to achieve optimal draft picks. 

Proponents of this theory point to the Pittsburgh Penguins who turned years of ineptitude into Sidney Crosby/ Evgeny Malkin and, later, Stanley Cup wins and success in the playoffs. Chicago captured three Cups in five years using the boost from choosing Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane at the top of the draft.

Tampa Bay, as well, has won a Cup and led the Southeast Division after snagging Vincent Lecavalier/ Victor Hedman at the top of the draft.

As my son Evan and I document in our upcoming book Inexact Science, the truth is a little more complicated than that. “Thanks to a combination of factors, equality hasn’t always been the case, as even the greatest of talent evaluators and teachers often get it wrong and, only occasionally, strike it rich. And that lottery hasn’t always ensured turnarounds for sad-sack clubs; the upper-class teams often dig up gems in lower rounds, where the success rate has traditionally been minimal.”

The vagaries of tanking for success were never more evident the past week as the poster children for draft manipulation, the Edmonton Oilers, were waxed in four straight games by a decidedly unglamorous Winnipeg Jets club in the first round of the 2021 playoffs. 

And the Toronto Maple Leafs, who also surfed the top of the draft list, blew a 3-1 games lead to Montreal, losing their first-round series to the Habs. Team Destiny became Team Destined To Fail.

To underscore the Oilers upset consider that the team that harvested Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent Hopkins from the top echelons of the draft was considered a favourite by many to win the Canadian Division and maybe even the Stanley Cup this season. It was their time, said many. 

Turned out to be time for another face-plant. The Jets reduced the Oilers swift stars to plodding through the neutral zone and saw their Vezina Trophy goalie Connor Hellybuyck out-perform Mike Smith in the Edmonton net. It was over so fast that the teams could barely work up a good hate for each other. For yet another year the Oilers attempt to replicate their greatness from the 1980s/ 90s was reduced to a green garbage day of woe and recrimination. 

Things will be no more harmonious as Toronto cleans out its lockers after blowing a glorious chance to win its first playoff series since 2004. No doubt ex-coach Mike Babcock, sacked by management to placate their prima donnas, is enjoying a good laugh.

So what happened? Edmonton General manager Ken Holland was left to face a media and public fed up with the failure to turn the NHL’s top player— McDavid— into something greater than 20 postseason games total in his six-year career in Edmonton. Holland acknowledged the disappointment but urged caution, citing the Detroit Red Wings he worked for from the 1980s till 2019 It takes time to create a winner, he urged.

It’s true; from the year they drafted Steve Yzerman (1983) till they finally captured a Cup in 1997, Detroit was Team Underachiever. In the postseason they made a habit of losing to teams they’d buried in the regular season. As we point out in Inexact Science “the 1991–92 season turned out to be the first of 24 straight campaigns in which the Wings posted a winning record.” Yet it was a full 14 years from Yzerman’s arrival till the club won their first Cup since 1955.

So Holland’s admonition to stay patient has a basis in fact. EXCEPT. 

There was no salary cap to hobble Detroit. The Red Wings had something more than just the great drafting of Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov, Nicholas Lidstrom and Slava Kozlov. They had an owner, Mike Ilitch, who was willing to spend as much as it took in a free market to retain the players his staff had chosen and to add others in trades/ signings. 

The Oilers— and many other teams with talented young cores— are managing under a ticking time bomb to win now or lose some— or even most— of your top young players to stay under the cap. In the case of Edmonton they simply cannot keep their corps of stars at market value without surrendering one or more.

As we’ve written before, this season the Oil had approximately 60 percent of its cap tied up in five players. Getting the rest of the players needed to win the title under a cap has been the rub for Edmonton. While Holland’s Red Wings had some of the richest contracts in the NHL during their four Cups in ten years they didn’t have any salary pressures— except from their owner— on maintaining a budget. 

Which brings us back to the question we asked back in January of 2018 . Should McDavid continue to sacrifice the best years of his career to a team that can’t put a winner around him? “Edmonton has turned No. 1 picks Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent Hopkins, Nail Yakapov and McDavid into so much white mud. In addition, they also had a No. 3, a No. 4, a No. 7 and a No. 10 overall pick in the draft in the span after choosing Hall in 2010. Hell, just for giggles, they had three first rounders in 2007.”

Even in 2018 there was a feeling that it can’t go on like this. “Management contends there will be no fire sales. The players will have to pull themselves out together. Perhaps. The biggest issue is how long McDavid wants to sequester himself in northern Alberta, far from the marketing opportunities of the NHL’s large markets, rarely seeing the postseason. (By contrast, Gretzky never missed the postseason in his 14 NHL seasons.) 

“In the age of LeBron James organizing his own NBA teams, MLB powerhouses buying what they want, the notion that McDavid is wedded to a floundering small market in perpetuity is wishful thinking for Edmonton fans. It says here, there’s a clock ticking on the Oilers’ monopoly on McDavid’s affections. 

If he can’t realize his brilliant skill in Edmonton it will be somewhere else. And sooner than you might think.” Hey, if he’s determined not to win a Cup maybe they can trade him to Toronto. Too soon?

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx