By Zackery Robert
One third of the way through this series we now go back up north and take a stop again in the province of Alberta and look at the Edmonton Oilers. The Oilers are known for many things in the league, the greatest player of all time, the current best player in the league, and of course some of the worst drafting and developing in recent history. It may just look like that the Oilers are on their way out of that horrendous drafting slump that we saw during the 2010s and are showing some promising young prospects.
To begin we will look at their most successful draft choice ever, Wayne Gretzky was not drafted by the Oilers his WHA team sold him to then WHA team Edmonton Oilers. Nevertheless, in 2015 the Edmonton Oilers won the draft lottery and moved up one spot to own the right to select first in 2015. Of course with doing so they selected Connor McDavid, the best prospect since Sidney Crosby. Currently McDavid sits at 850 career points in 569 career games he has five Art Ross trophies, two (with an impending third) Hart trophies, three (with an impending fourth) Ted Lindsay trophies and now his first ever Rocket Richard trophy. All of this was done in only eight seasons, he has a better career sheet then most hall of fame players had when they retired fully. He is the undisputed number one player in the league and he made that known with a dominant 153 point season that included 64 goals and 89 assists. This is an obvious no brainer when it comes to successful Oilers picks, McDavid is number one.
Next we will rewind 36 years and go into the third round of the 1979 draft where the Oilers held the 48th overall pick and chose former WHA player Mark Messier. An integral part of the Oilers of the 80s where they won four Stanley cups. Messier played with the Oilers from 1979-1991 before moving on to the New York Rangers. In his time in Edmonton he scored 1034 points in 851 games for a career points per game of 1.22. Messier proved even more just how valuable he was when he led the Gretzky-less Oilers to a Stanley cup in 1990, he scored 129 points that year and captured the Hart and Lester B.Pearson award as league’s MVP. The Oilers retired Messier’s number 11 on February 27th 2007 further cementing him in Oilers history as an all-time great.
For the third and final top choice draft pick we will look at the 1980 draft where Paul Coffey was selected sixth overall. Even though he only played seven seasons with the Oilers Paul Coffey recorded unheard of stats for a defenseman. All but one of his seven seasons were over a point per game and between 84-86 he scored 126, 121, and 138 points and secured only two Norris trophies in those three years, Rod Langway would win in 1984, even more impressive is that Coffey was aged 22-24 during this time, these are unheard of numbers and at such an early age for his career. He still is to this day, the Oilers’ franchise defenseman.
For the Oilers of the 1990s-2010s their drafting was very suspect that left a lot to be desired. I mean three straight years of number one picks and they still could not get out of the top ten draft picks for years. Between 2009-2019 the Oilers made it out of the top ten picks only once in 2017 with the 22nd pick choosing Kailer Yamamoto. Other than that year every other year in that time frame was 10th or better.
When looking at these picks in particular one that stands out like a sore thumb is that of 2012 first overall pick Nail Yakupov, Yakupov struggled mightily after his first year in the league, he never got better and neither did the Oilers. Yakupov never had the skill to help bring the Oilers out from the basement and it never appeared in his NHL career anywhere else. During his four years in Edmonton he put up a stat line of 252 games 50 goals and 61 assists for 111 points. After that Yakupov was traded to the St Louis Blues for a conditional third round pick which eventually turned out to be Stuart Skinner, the best thing Yakupov did for the Oilers was getting traded. After his NHL career Yakupov has continued to play back in Russia in the KHL where he will more than likely stay for the foreseeable future.
Next up we move back three years to 2009 where the Oilers held the 10th pick in the draft and chose Magnus Paajarvi. Paajarvi played in parts of three seasons in the organisation where he amassed 163 games and 58 points. He never caught up to the game with the Oilers which seemed to be a trend for a lot of their picks in that time. After his stint in the NHL finished in 2019, Paajarvi went overseas and has played in the KHL and most recently in the SweHL. Unfortunately this was just another pick that could not bring the Oilers out from the woods and alas they were still lost.
For the final player to speak on we will move away from the 2000s and go back to the 1994 entry draft where the Oilers were selecting fourth overall. They went ahead and chose Jason Bonsignore, the 6 ‘4 centre from New York. Unfortunately nothing much ever came up for this pick, Bonsignore played in only 21 games for the Oilers and scored three points. Following that he was traded away at the end of 1997 ending his tenure with the Oilers at only three and a half years.
In 2023 the Oilers look to be on Better ground prospect wise, with Dylan Holloway, Reid Schaefer, and Xavier Bourgault leading the pack. Now with the Oilers locking up sixth best in the league and playoff bound one can assume that their pick will end up anywhere around 25th or later so once draft bound the Oilers should solely focus on finding a quality defence prospect.
Their total picks going into the 2023 draft counts at four with a 2nd, 5th, 6th, and 7th so we shall guesstimate that they will land around 57-60 with their first pick in the draft. In this area here are two prospects the Oilers should focus on to better their blue line. Jakob Dvorak and Gavin McCarthy, two sizeable defenseman that can help add a punch with some speed and that can drive plays for the Oilers, we will see what happens in Nashville on June 28th.
For more information on the 2023 NHL Draft class be sure to pick up your copy of the comprehensive DraftPro 2023 NHL Draft Guide.