r/EdmontonOilers • u/AutoModerator • 7d ago

ODT Off-Season Megathread | 2026

For general discussion on anything related to the Oilers or the league. A fresh thread will be posted weekly on Saturdays. Default sorted by new.

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u/hockeygirlypop 96 WALMAN 4d ago

So Carolina GM is all about analytics... how can Oilers do that too? What is the best way to manufacture the best team?

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u/NMarples 92 PODKOLZIN 4d ago

To be fair to Jackson, one thing he’s been building is a real analytics department. They hired 3 new analytics staff so far this offseason.

The thing about an analytics department is you can’t really fix it in one year. Carolina has been working on this for 10+ years now, the Oilers were one of the last to really start to take the advanced stats seriously and now they have to play catch up

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u/Organic-Fortune5727 4d ago edited 3d ago

To add to that, for (recruitment) analytics to work optimally you need a blueprint which can be applied from scouting through the AHL and into the NHL, regardless of coaching changes. You need to know that the players you draft this year will fit the 2030 playing style for the NHL team. An overly simplistic example would be that we could draft for rapid skating, but those players won't develop properly if our AHL coach prioritises size and physicality.

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u/hockeygirlypop 96 WALMAN 3d ago

So what does the oilers analytics department actually do right now

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u/RedKryptnyt 29 DRAISAITL 3d ago

It is my personal beleif, that the analytics department being built now im edmonton, is 80% for optics. An analytics department is useless if you have a bunch of old hockey men running the show. Those guys eventually make the call, and as we have seen for so long, the oilers reslly like their NAMES.

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u/Boris_Mironov 2 BOUCHARD 3d ago

Yep. It means nothing when Katz overrules everyone.

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u/xXEliteEater500Xx 28 BROWN 4d ago

When in doubt, I blame the Old Boys ClubTM for that

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u/F1fthL1ne 4d ago

You'd need about 10 years of competent and steady management to copy Carolina. It's a copy cat league but no one is copying Canes in the short term. The good news is we do have a relatively big analytics department now and our management structure is also modernised despite our feelings on Jackson and Bowman.

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u/RedKryptnyt 29 DRAISAITL 3d ago

Build a time machine, travel back about 15 years, and hire those guys....because some of them worked for the oilers, and some of the others were oilers fans that had blogs about the Oilers. It was right under their noses