Seeing What We Have

The Oilers have changed their roster over several times over in the last 10 years, but one common trait is the removal of younger effective NHL players for even younger unproven players.

This is often explained by saying something along the lines of "We need to see what this player can do". I can't see how this philosophy makes sense, especially when you spent 2 or 3 years developing that player and living through the growing pains in the first place. The whole bird in hand vs 2 in the bush scenario.

I understand that good teams need to bring in younger players, that's not what I'm arguing... I'm arguing the process. Ideally what you want to do is bring these guys into the NHL slowly. That includes sheltered minutes and sometimes being a healthy scratch (and even bouncing back and forth between the NHL and AHL). As you proceed the idea is to give them more and more rope to see what they do with it. Often they'll simply hang themselves with it and that's part of the process. You go back and do it agin. Eventually these players show they can play, in which case you have yourself a shiney new NHL player... Or they show that they can't reach that level and you move on to the next one.

The Oilers have a pretty good track record of following this process. Guys like Horcoff, Cleary, Hemsky, Pisani, Chimera, etc... were all brought up in this manner. The problem is the Oilers seem to have a habit of trading the player in front of these guys at the start of the process instead of the end... so the Oilers not only end up trying to break in a young player, they are doing it with one less quality vet in the lineup.

This trend seems to have started with the trade of Mike Grier to make room for Jason Chimera. Chimera has turned out to be a decent NHLer, but he Oilers took the guy he was going to replace and traded him very early in Chimera's development cycle. The Oilers then spent Almost 130 NHL games on his development before promptly swapping him for a pair of picks so they could give Rita more playing time.

We are seeing it again with Brodziak, but this seems to be the most drastic. Brodziak is unspectacular but he's a cheap option in the bottom 6 who can play the game at the NHL level on both sides of the puck. He's just played his 175th NHL game and the Oilers have spent a lot of time, money and probably a couple of wins to get him to this point. Now they paid for the development of this player and gave him to a division rival to enjoy.

That's not a bad trade if you've got a player sitting there who's come along through the process as well and has shown that he's close enough to Brodziak that if he represents a cheaper contract you are better off going with him... or if he's simply surpassed Brodziak.

Pouliot may be that player, he's probably close enough to be considered. If it's Brule though, someone isn't thinking this through. Part of the idea is to give these guys more and more responsibility to let them progress. Brule hasn't gotten that this year. From there you need one of 2 things:

1. Your replacement player needs to show he can play at the level or close to the level of the player he's replacing (this is where you can compare contracts). Brule hasn't done that.

2. Your replacement players has to have actually surpassed the player you are replacing. Brule definitely hasn't done that.

Brule doesn't fall under these categories. As much as you need to see "what you have", you still need to go about it the right way. Brule was not good enough to stick last year and this year he's going to take over one of the more critical positions on the team? If you are going to go this route and bring 2 young centres at a time, you need to supplement them with decent veterans, not further young players. All the development work the Oilers have spent on Brodziak is flushed and now they need to develop Brule on the fly.

You can't replace a player simply to see what another player "may have". You can't get better that way because you are always replacing more developed players with lesser developed players. You've already seen what they can do right now... it's why they were in the minors and not playing in NHL right now in the first place. That doesn't mean they can't get better, but you need to do it correctly