Edmonton Oilers GM calls last season a ‘debacle’

The Edmonton Oilers were a tire fire last season amid heightened expectations. Their defense was among the worst in the league and while many expected their offense to improve, it was nearly as bad. GM Craig MacTavish remains unfazed though in brushing off last year while looking forward to the upcoming NHL season.

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“Last year was such a debacle from start to finish in so many ways,” MacTavish told Bob McKenzie at TSN, “that we are for sure going to better, it’s just a measure of how much.”

The Oilers had the third-worst record in the NHL last year so improvement is a given. It’s the ‘how much’ that gives one pause. That will depend first and foremost on the team’s top line, manned by Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Jordan Eberle. MacTavish had words for that line as well.

"“We all know Nugent-Hopkins and Eberle are really good players but what we don’t know is whether they are star players. They have a lot of room for growth…but they’ve had enough experience and enough time. I think, in fairness to them, they want this more so than anybody else. We need to see whether they’re going to be good players or whether they’re going to be star players.”"

The Oilers will need more than a few star performances to make the playoffs, but improving and setting the tone for a new culture should be a reasonable goal for this season. If the team can do that, the word debacle could soon be a memory in Edmonton.