bucbrett

Eberle is signed 6/36 and Hall 7/42. I worry about that too which is why the wasting of the first year of all of these guys' ELC bothers me so much.

He led with his knee. He's not a dirty player but the play warranted a two game suspension. This season is quickly taking a nosedive.

They do have Smyth, Horcoff (captain) and Hemsky and although Smytty nor Hemmer wear the alternate captain's "A" I see them as the leaders of the team along with Horcoff. However, I do agree that they are entirely too young and this goes back to my previous point about rushing these kids instead of returning them to Juniors or letting them play in the AHL for a bit. They burned a year of all these kids' entry level contracts just to allow them to get their faces kicked in on the first or second line (in Hall, Eberle, Nuge, and Yak's case).

The problem is that the toughs that they do have are essentially Coke machines wearing ice skates. It used to be Steve McIntyre, then Darcy Hordichuk who fortunately is in the AHL now. Oh and the dynamic duo of Fistric and Peckham on the blueline. And what a pairing that was tonight. I'd love to have a Steve Ott or a David Clarkson- someone who can handle his business and not end the season a minus 20.

The maturation process is a valid point. They rushed Hall, Eberle, Nugent-Hopkins, Paajarvi, and now J. Schultz to the NHL (not to mention their complete mishandling of Linus Omark). My biggest fear is that the Oilers are developing an army of little Patrik Stefan clones, beaten down by failure and never developing into fully rounded NHL players.

Fantastic job, it looks great!

I wish I could blame it on the defense, but honestly I can't. They cannot score goals with all that talent and I just don't understand it.

Yep!