17to85

IMO a prospect doesn't mean depth. Depth to me is having players around who can fill in if you're in a pinch. The Jets, for example, have a lot of depth on D, with eight or nine guys who can play in the NHL. The Oilers don't have six guys who are good enough to play D in the NHL. If I was the Oilers GM, I'd bring in a guy like Matt Greene . He's big, tough, good in his own end, & he probably won't cost a lot of money. I think he'd help those young dmen a lot. Tom Gilbert is another UFA they should look at. Bringing them back would fix a couple of their previous mistakes when they let those guys go. But they do have lots of guys who can play in the NHL, including some of those prospects. What they lacked was someone who could handle big responsibilities on the back end. Hell Marincin and Klefbom were arguably the most impressive defenders for Edmonton last year, they absolutely count as depth, but it's not just for right now you have to look at, when you're building a team you have to look at the future as well. When you have a lot of players on an upwards development curve who will be forcing their way into the lineup soon you don't want to be locked into a bunch of older players long term for big money and then be unable to move them out. They had to pay Ference a hell of a lot of money for significant term to get him there, what would they have to pay to get someone better than that? Trading Gilbert was one of the stupidest things Tambellini did, especially for a worse player, that's part of the reason why he was fired. Gilbert wasn't perfect but he was a guy like Petry who could muddle his way through a top pairing without completely embarassing himself even if he was miscast in the role. And hell Matt Greene is a prime example of why you don't make knee jerk moves. Matt Greene and Stoll couple young players in areas the Oilers thought they had some depth at for Vishnovsky. Vishnovsky was really good for the Oilers but he didn't want to stay there so they traded him for Whitney who was good for a while but an injury case and his play fell off quickly and they got nothing for him. Meanwhile the team now would kill to have Greene and Stoll back. When you don't have great depth making trades can hurt you long term, that's exactly how the Oilers got into the problems they are in. Build your depth first then start making trades. The only place the Oilers really do have depth right now is among their D prospects. Tambellini mismanaged the veterans very badly, but he was fired for doing so, trading away the young players willy nilly isn't going to help the Oilers in the long term, better to stay the course with them and build around them. If they are keen to add a veteran defensemen through trade they should be trading some of their defence prospects for it not the forwards. Paajarvi for Perron last year was a good move because you are switching one player for another at the same position and you're not filling one hole to open another. Too many holes in that system (not just the roster, but the system) to be trading from one area to fill another.

It's not trying to play god or knowing better than nature, it's about trying to mitigate the adverse effects nature can have. There's a reason all these methods came into use, it makes it easier to grow more food in the same space and you don't lose your crop if you get a pest problem. Sure you could quite easily grow food without using any of that stuff, but prices would go up and they'd fluctuate more and there would be more shortages. Doing things the natural way is great, nothing tastes quite as good as fresh stuff from the garden however the way the world is today you can't go back. Everything is too centralized.

It's a numbers game. They have a lot of defencemen kicking around with definite NHL upside. Marincin, Klefbom and Maybe Nurse (because he was really good in preseason last year) could all force their way into the NHL in the next year or two, they already have Petry and Schultz as younger guys (Petry being a veteran when he's only got a couple years of NHL play under his belt as well) Ference is there for multiple years... That's not even taking into account players like Musil or Simpson and a couple others who have been having success in the development system. If these guys start to force their way in that's more guys than you have room for. Meanwhile who are the forwards knocking on the door... Lander who can score tons in the AHL but can't get it to translate to the NHL, Pitlick who has limited offence but looks like he might be able to play a bottom 6 game... except he's hurt all the time. Arcobello an undersized centre... who else? few guys who might turn into bottom 6 guys eventually but no guarantees. Forwards are a much bigger cause for concern as an OIler fan than the defense. Go look at how many goals that team actually scored, look at how many of them Taylor Hall factored in on. If Taylor Hall doesn't have a big night that team can't score goals. It's not about keeping the puck out of their net, it's about not being able to play offence.

it's not about having 24 hours a day fresh and exciting content, it's about having the options when there is a full schedule. For example this past weekend TSN had basketball and TSN2 had nascar, in the mean time the hockey they were showing was starting and they had no where to show it. Now obviously they're losing hockey but they'll fill that void with another sport.

And that is why I'm so sick of hearing about it, because it's all bullshit. It's a lack of effort from the national media actually looking at the team. They see Hall and Eberle and RNH and Yakupov and just assume that's all they have. The deepest part of their organization is actually defense prospects. They have crap forward depth and their centre depth is an embarassment, but in a couple years they're going to have too many defencemen needing spots in the NHL and will have to move some of them.

Again you missed the part where their defense is already going to be shored up through the system right? They could use a veteran to play for a couple years on the top pair to buy them some time for Nurse to round himself out, he's a pretty raw prospect right now. I'd love to see them add someone like Markov but no clue how feasible that is. This whole idea that the Oilers need any D available is so sickening, they need some quality forward depth a lot more than they need defensive depth. RIght now they're a team that lives and dies based on how far Taylor Hall can drag them in a game.

Yeah Buff is so good at D they moved him to forward, come on. Young defencemen isn't what the Oilers needed either, they have plenty of those of their own. They need quality veteran players and the cost of doing business for those kinds of players is very high because every team wants more quality veteran defencemen. Like I said, it's easy to say "should have traded players for a defenceman" much harder to actually come up with a deal that makes sense for both teams.

I could add that there have been other health benefits not mentioned, such as consistent blood test readings, less coughing and a general turn away from unhealthy eating, and now that you mention it…more power, so I can't offer that as proof, more so dietary choices, but I can safely say that watching what I eat before it goes in, definitely works for us as things turn out. It has not been a one week turn around for us, more so a delving into and learning experience over the last 3 and a 1/2 years. It probably started upon moving here and the close proximity to a farmer's market that is walking distance to our place. So, it has evolved slowly, kinda like the Bomber offence. So can I make the assumption that you've done more than simply switch to organic stuff? Sounds like there's more to it than simply going from non-organic to organic and that there's bigger dietary changes in play here.

I notice you're not naming a top d-man that was available for that price, and no guys like Buff don't count as top d-men. Hell it seems like the most likely guy the Oilers could have got was Cobourn, and that's not exactly a legit top guy either but the flyers didn't want to give him up for a reasonable price either. Something else to consider with Edmonton as well is that they don't really have a lot of depth at forward either so if they trade one of those guys they just make another hole. People like to only look at the NHL team when they look at the Oilers and never look at just how terrible their system was when it all fell apart on them. The problem with the Oilers was the asset management of Tambellini. Turning for example Joni Pitkanen into Eric Cole into Patrick O'Sullivan into Jim Vandermeer into nothing. Or turning Vishnovsky into Whitney into nothing. Or holding onto Hemsky too long that they couldn't get a good return for him. One of the interesting things to see is how in his first year on the job as GM Craig Mctavish basically purged everyone Tambellini had brought in as a free agent or trade. It's easy to say "oh trade someone for a top defenceman" not so easy to find a team willing to move one of those guys for less than a monstrous overpayment.

I wonder if people are going to be willing to sign here if they pick up a reputation of just dropping guys before giving them a chance. The optics just look really sketchy. I don't know that it's gotten to that point yet. There haven't been that many guys cut, and they did get to watch these guys at the mini camp. It's not a real camp, but it can give you a sense of whether or not these guys can run well enough to play on a CFL field. but if it becomes standard procedure what effect does that have long term? And to be quite honest I would hope that these professional football scouts could tell if a guy can run well enough on a CFL field before even offering a contract.

Is it? What changes have you noticed in your health since changing? Ha, I hesitated to post "that word", because I knew it would spark discussion, but that's good…right? As to the health benefits, how about better sleeps, no need for ex-lax (know what I mean?-know what I mean?), and the food is fresh. But I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I can suddenly leap tall buildings or run a few extra miles, but I do know the sense of eating free-range or grass fed products does have a psychological advantage, and to me, that's healthy. But if you want proof, I can't help you there. It's all a personal choice and all I can tell you is, it works for me and my wife. I would question whether those psychological benefits you see are actually benefits or simply the placebo effect in action. I mean if it works for you then more power to you, but I think it's a worthwhile question to explore.

I wonder if people are going to be willing to sign here if they pick up a reputation of just dropping guys before giving them a chance. The optics just look really sketchy.

yeah but trade who? and for who? You think teams were lining up to give quality defencemen for Shawn Horcoff and Ales Hemsky? That's the Oilers problem, they allowed the depth to get so poor that they couldn't make a trade to fill one hole without opening up another giant hole.

LOL - my cousin has an organic orchard here in Kelowna. He says that the mantra of the organic grower here is "we spray at night". The whole organic thing is sooo stupid, but a clever way to get people to pay three times as much for the same food. And I say this having grown up on a farm. If you don't spray, you don't have a crop. And that's just how it is. We've grown food on this planet for thousands of years without having to spray it. I'm not saying some organic growers don't spray their crops, but they're supposed to use organic pesticides that don't contain synthetic compounds. What's the difference between organic and synthetic? They're looking for the same effect just one is coming from less efficient natural sources and one is created specifically to do the job. The reason we spray crops now is to increase yield, grow more food in less space, with the population of the earth growing that is a good thing. They use genetically modified crops for the same reason, higher yield with less area used, which also has the benefits of less energy input to produce that yield. Organic is a fad in my mind that allows people to make themselves feel superior but really the only thing it does is up their food bill. Honestly I think if people are THAT concerned about how their foods are produced maybe they should plant their own gardens and be as self sufficient as possible. Buy your meat directly from a farmer somewhere all that kind of thing. But then again people want the convenience of going to the store and having everything there so they're willing to get scammed by a label.

That's what we're trying to figure out.

That's because it's Regina and the whole place isn't the nicest area around.

Sobeys are everywhere. There's one right down the street from my house so I shop there all the time simply out of convenience.

Nonsense. The highest rated defensemen in the Hall draft year was Gudbranson who is nothing special, the highest rated defensemen in the RNH draft year was Adam Larsson who played in the AHL last year. Yakupov vs. Murray is a more interesting debate however Yakupov was the consensus top player for everyone, and let's not forget that in his rookie year Yakupov led the Oilers in goal scoring and was tied for the league rookie lead in scoring but led rookies in goals. Just because Dallas Eakins is a moron who thought he was dealing with a lazy Russian and torpedoed his confidence doesn't make Yakupov a bad pick. That kid is going to score a lot of goals in his career. I just hope it's actually in Edmonton and he isn't driven away by anti-Russian sentiments. It's not like the Oilers ignored defense either, they got Marincin in the 2nd round the year they took Hall, they took Klefbom in the first round the year they took Nugent-Hopkins, they got Nurse last year, they signed free agent Schultz, they took Musil in the 2nd round the year they drafted RNH. They have drafted a lot of defensemen, in fact defense prospects is the deepest part of the system, but like I said, you're looking at 5 years before defensemen are ready to play in the NHL usually.

Plus Kessler and his NMC wouldn't waive to go to another Canadian city. He wants to play in the states. And yes I do think Kesler has more value than Kane simply because a selke winning centre is more valuable to teams than a scoring winger.

Sobeys bought out Safeway right? Surprises me that they kept the brand around, it's that strong I guess?

and neither of those prospects are really surefire guys. Horvat might top out at a middle 6 guy and nothing more.

The Oilers problem is that they weren't rebuilding for a decade. They only started rebuilding the year they drafted Taylor Hall. They were still selling the farm for magic beans and chasing the big free agents trying to recapture that 2006 magic. Since they drafted Taylor Hall they have been building through the draft and their drafting actually looks good, Hall-RNH-Eberle is a top line that even though they're young can play against the other top lines in the league and hold their own. Tambellini was a complete failure at adding quality NHL depth behind them though so they are on their own. Interestingly enough though, guys like Marincin and Klefbom and Nurse are poised to break into their defense (be 5 years after drafting Marincin next season) so that right there will make the overall team stronger. The key in Edmonton is still patience. They need to add a few key positions to the team but they've essentially done the whole thing through the draft without starting with anything in the system of a high volume of draft picks. It takes time to draft and develop defencemen and depth forwards. Right now if you go look at the Oilers system the NHL team has young skilled forwards and crappy veterans but the farm team is filled with defense prospects and forwards who project into bigger bottom 6 type players. The guys who are ready to play in the bigs first are in the NHL and the rest are still coming along. The Jets situation is a little different, they had some good pieces already in the system they could start with. Having a Bogosian and Enstrom as imperfect as they are is helpful, having Kane in the system and getting Wheeler were good starting pieces. Now it's just waiting for guys like Schiefele and Trouba to be ready for bigger roles and the rest should fall into place. They've been drafting well since they came to Winnipeg just need to wait for the prospects to be ready.

I believe he got hurt in game 5. I'm not saying it's the only reason just thinking that when I look at their D it's not super deep and losing your main shut down guy can have a big impact.

On the other hand the Kings make their living by playing with the puck in their opponents zone and not letting them have it. If you lose some of your ability to take the puck away from them in your own zone then it's hard to score when you're chasing them around the defensive zone right?