Disaster? Top Oilers prospects almost all trended down or were moved out last year

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Fact: Almost all of the Edmonton Oilers’ top prospects trended down or were moved out in the last year.

If we look at the Top 20 Oilers prospects — as ranked by the Cult of Hockey panel last summer —  we see that seven of them have been moved out of the organization, eight of them trended down as prospects, two of them remained about the same, and just three of them, Matt Savoie, Noah Philp and Maxim Berzekin, trended up.

Question: Is this a disaster? A problem? Something to worry about? Or not a big deal?

Here’s one way of looking at it: successful organizations have strong drafting and developing. They select and nurture a number of solid young players who can either be used as trade bait to bolster the big club, or these prospects find a way to defy the odds and become top NHLers, breaking into the Core 12 of their team, the Top 7 forwards, 4 d-man and top goalie who form the spine of any NHL team.

But there’s another way to look at it: To win in the NHL, your Core 12 must be outstanding. But that means you need to develop just one Core 12 player each year. You don’t need to find four or five NHL players each year from your farm system. Instead, you need to get one or two excellent young players who can find a way to become Core 12 keepers on your club.

If we look at the past 18 years of Edmonton Oilers drafting and developing, we find that Edmonton has drafted and/or developed 21 Core 12 players.

Goalie (2): Devan Dubnyk, Stuart Skinner.

D-men (9): Jeff Petry, Oscar Klefbom, Justin Schultz, Erik Gustafsson, Darnell Nurse, John Marino, Evan Bouchard, Mike Kesselring, Philip Broberg.

Forwards (10): Kyle Brodziak, Sam Gagner, Andrew Cogliano, Jordan Eberle, Taylor Hall, Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Ryan McLeod, Dylan Holloway.

One major problem, obviously, is that Edmonton has been unable to hold on to some of those players, either because management failed to properly recognize their merit, as in Brodziak, Petry, Dubnyk, Kesselring, and Gustafsson, or because management failed to sign them, as in Marino, Broberg and Holloway, or because they just didn’t work out here, as in Cogliano, Gagner and Schultz.

I’ll suggest that any farm system producing two Core 12 NHLers per year is doing an outstanding job. The Oilers have generally failed to meet that mark.

But will they meet that mark with this class of 2022? Are there two or three Core 12 players in this group?

Matt Savoie had a great year in Bakersfield and looked good in Edmonton. Noah Philp played strong two-way hockey in Edmonton and looks like he could become a fourth line NHLer this year with the Oilers. Maxim Berezkin just keeps getting better in the KHL, and could well become a second line winger in the NHL. And while Sam O’Reilly was traded for fellow prospect Ike Howard, he did trend up in major junior hockey, which is why Edmonton was able to acquire a top younger player like Howard in return.

We could also see surprising results from prospect forward Roby Jarventie and goalie Eemil Vinni if they can get healthy.

But, as mentioned, overall 2024-25 was a poor year for Edmonton’s Class of 2024, with O’Reilly, Max Wanner, Raphael Lavoie, Olivier Rodrigue, Phil Kemp, Shane LaChance, and Luca Munzenberger not in the organization any longer.

Trending down either a lot or a bit, sometimes due to injury, were Jarventie, Vinni, Beau Akey, Jayden Grubbe, Matvey Petrov, James Stefan, Dalyn Wakely and Matt Coponi.

Not good.

None of this is a cause for optimism.

But I can assure you of one thing — if Savoie and Howard come in and earn jobs in the Top 9 this year, if they can hang in as two-players and both put up 30-plus even strength points — the farm system will have done its job. If they can put up 40 or 50 points each, we’ll all be smiling. And that’s a real possibility, isn’t it?

Heck if one of them is a 50-point player this yearn we’ll all be shouting from the rooftops and dancing in the streets.

Savoie and Howard are that promising. And you don’t necessarily need quantity from a farm system, you need quality. If Savoie and Howard can provide that, mission accomplished.

P.S. Tonight we’ll have the first post from my colleague Kurt Leavins on the Cult of Hockey’s top prospects for 2025.  This year we have myself, Leavins, Ira Cooper and Jim Matheson doing the voting. Thanks to Cooper and Matheson for joining in our effort, as both have done for several seasons now.

At the same time, I’m reminded, once again, of our loss of Bruce McCurdy, who relished this work and rating and ranking prospects. McCurdy and Jonathan Willis led the way with our initial Cult of Hockey prospect rankings.

At the Cult of Hockey

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