'Not trying to take a different route': Oilers GM isn't planning major changes
Connor McDavid isn't waiting for a cavalry of reinforcements to gallop over the horizon and lift the Edmonton Oilers to a championship.
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Which is good, because general manager Stan Bowman isn't promising one.
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Aside from a mid-level move here and there, it will be pretty much the same team coming back to try again next year.
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'We come back and we do it again,' McDavid said about his expectations for next season. 'It's not like we have a ton of cap room and a long list of highly-touted prospects knocking on the door. It has to come from within the players who are playing. Everyone has to find a new level, myself included.
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'Ultimately, it's on every person in that room and that organization to dust themselves off and come back and be better.'
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That's the company message Bowman reinforced when he met with the media for a 25-minute post-mortem/look ahead Friday. He sees a team that is THIS close to a championship and doesn't want to fix what isn't necessarily broken.
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'The way it ended certainly feels like a disappointment. It's hard, in the moment, to reflect on how great a season it was. We fell short, but we did a lot of great things. There are 30 other teams that would trade with where we were.'
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Bowman saw a team where goaltending, depth, puck movers and star players combined to go on a 12-2 run in the Western Conference playoffs, blowing through the Kings, Golden Knights and Stars like it was easy.
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'We left those teams, L.A., Vegas and Dallas, scratching their heads like, 'What happened?'' said Bowman. 'We did to those other teams what Florida did to us.'
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So you don't blow that up. But standing pat isn't an option, either. Bowman said talks are already underway in advance of the free agent market opening on July 1, with the focus being at forward and in goal.
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'The area with the least amount of change will be defence,' he said. 'We have guys under contract and they played very well. Probably won't be big changes there.
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'Up front, we need some different players. I wouldn't expect wholesale charges, we're not going to have nine or 10 new players, but I do think we're going to have some changes. More likely, the forwards and the goalies are the ones we're going to evaluate the most deeply.'
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The Oilers also need to get younger and faster, but that's easier said than done when you're in the middle of a Win Now window. This isn't the time to be breaking in rookies, but they also can't ignore the future.
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'We're going to do our best to give opportunities to players,' said Bowman. 'But it's not like we're going to put a bunch of inexperienced guys in the lineup. Our objective is to win next year. We're not trying to take a different route, we want to be playing in the final next year.'
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