Ken Holland has found himself in a tricky situation halfway through his first season at the helm of the Edmonton Oilers.
His big-picture plan is to retool the organization, through the draft. There’s a core here of Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Oscar Klefbom, and others along with a nice prospect pool in the minors. But there’s still a ways to go, and the most prudent way to add talent is through drafting and developing.
But there’s also a team and a fanbase desperate for playoff hockey. There’s a building that isn’t being sold out on a nightly basis because fans aren’t interested in paying top dollar to see a team that isn’t winning. There are also two superstars in McDavid and Draisaitl doing everything they can to drag this team to the playoffs.
The Oilers are on the bubble. Their hot start has come to an end and a cold stretch in December has the team right on the cusp of the playoffs. It’s pretty much a coin flip at this point. That, of course, is if Holland doesn’t do anything before the deadline. If he makes a big addition or two, the likelihood of the team making the playoffs obviously becomes a lot higher.
So, what do you do now? Do you stick with the original plan and think about the big picture? Or do you lean into what’s right in front of you and try to make the playoffs?
The Oilers are wary of trading picks. There’s no guarantee all work out, but, the more lottery tickets you have, the better. They didn’t have a second- or third-rounder in 2015; their 2016 first-rounder is estranged from the organization; didn’t have a second-rounder in 2017; nothing in round three-to-five in 2018; and six picks last year. That’s one of the reasons they passed on Taylor Hall — not wanting to give up two more high selections.
Friedman went on to make another Oilers-related point, this time in regards to McDavid and Draisaitl’s frustration…
You can see the frustration on Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid as the rest of the Pacific catches the Oilers. St. Louis players in particular noticed in-game how upset Draisaitl was by missed chances in a 2-1 loss to the Blues on Dec. 17. They thought it really affected him.
So there are a couple of things going on here.
First, we have Friedman suggesting that Holland is skeptical of giving up draft picks, which isn’t all that surprising, given the fact we know his priority here is building the Oilers up for long-term success. When Peter Chiarelli came in, he was trigger happy, dealing away everything in his sight in order to fill what he viewed as primary needs for the organization. That won’t happen with Holland.
Second, we have the classic McDavid and Draisaitl are frustrated analysis. I mean, there’s no doubt that they are. They’re first and second in the league in points and they’re dragging the team on their backs to the best of their ability and they might not have anything to show for it at the end of the year. No, this isn’t McDavid and Draisaitl want out of Edmonton but there is merit to them being frustrated with potentially missing the playoffs for the third year in a row.
If the next general manager comes in and tries to remedy the Oilers with a quick fix, things will only get worse. Buyouts will worsen the cap situation long-term. Trading prospects and draft picks for short-term solutions will continue to hemorrhage the organization of depth. Being active in free agency will sink the Oilers deeper into cap hell.
The only solution is patience. It’ll take time, but they have to get it right this time.
That hasn’t changed. After 2020-21, the Oilers have a much neater salary cap situation that’ll afford them flexibility in free agency. They’ll also likely have a handful of internally-developed, young talent establishing itself on the roster. If they’re patient, they can continue to stock the farm this year and continue working towards a very deep farm system, something we haven’t seen since, well, I don’t even know.
But is being patient that easy? Can you tell McDavid and Draisaitl to be patient? Can you ask them to drag this roster all season to a position in which they’re in playoff contention at the trade deadline and then stand pat, hoping they can do a few more months of heavy lifting? That’s a big ask.
I can understand why Holland doesn’t want to deal draft picks away at this stage, but hopefully, he can find some kind of middle-ground, because standing pat and giving McDavid and Draisaitl nothing to work with down the stretch isn’t ideal.
PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
An investigator gave the World Anti-Doping Agency a pass on its handling of the inflammatory case involving Chinese swimmers, but not without hammering away at the “curious” nature of WADA’s “silence” after examining Chinese actions that did not follow rules designed to safeguard global sports.
WADA on Thursday released the full decision from Eric Cottier, the Swiss investigator it appointed to analyze its handling of the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.
In echoing wording from an interim report issued earlier this summer, Cottier said it was “reasonable” that WADA chose not to appeal the Chinese anti-doping agency’s explanation that the positives came from contamination.
“Taking into consideration the particularities of the case, (WADA) appears … to have acted in accordance with the rules it has itself laid out for anti-doping organizations,” Cottier wrote.
But peppered throughout his granular, 56-page analysis of the case was evidence and reminders of how WADA disregarded some of China’s violations of anti-doping protocols. Cottier concluded this happened more for the sake of expediency than to show favoritism toward the Chinese.
“In retrospect at least, the Agency’s silence is curious, in the face of a procedure that does not respect the fundamental rules, and its lack of reaction is surprising,” Cottier wrote of WADA’s lack of fealty to the world anti-doping code.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, latched onto this dynamic, saying Cottier’s information “clearly shows that China did not follow the rules, and that WADA management did nothing about it.”
One of the chief complaints over the handling of this case was that neither WADA nor the Chinese gave any public notice upon learning of the positive tests for the banned heart medication Temozolomide, known as TMZ.
The athletes also were largely kept in the dark and the burden to prove their innocence was taken up by Chinese authorities, not the athletes themselves, which runs counter to what the rulebook demands.
Despite the criticisms, WADA generally welcomed the report.
“Above all, (Cottier) reiterated that WADA showed no bias towards China and that its decision not to appeal the cases was reasonable based on the evidence,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said. “There are however certainly lessons to be learned by WADA and others from this situation.”
Tygart said “this report validates our concerns and only raises new questions that must be answered.”
Cottier expanded on doubts WADA’s own chief scientist, Olivier Rabin, had expressed over the Chinese contamination theory — snippets of which were introduced in the interim report. Rabin was wary of the idea that “a few micrograms” of TMZ found in the kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers stayed could be enough to cause the group contamination.
“Since he was not in a position to exclude the scenario of contamination with solid evidence, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities,” Cottier wrote.
Though recommendations for changes had been expected in the report, Cottier made none, instead referring to several comments he’d made earlier in the report.
Key among them were his misgivings that a case this big was largely handled in private — a breach of custom, if not the rules themselves — both while China was investigating and after the file had been forwarded to WADA. Not until the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on the positives were any details revealed.
“At the very least, the extraordinary nature of the case (23 swimmers, including top-class athletes, 28 positive tests out of 60 for a banned substance of therapeutic origin, etc.), could have led to coordinated and concerted reflection within the Agency, culminating in a formal and clearly expressed decision to take no action,” the report said.
WADA’s executive committee established a working group to address two more of Cottier’s criticisms — the first involving what he said was essentially WADA’s sloppy recordkeeping and lack of formal protocol, especially in cases this complex; and the second a need to better flesh out rules for complex cases involving group contamination.
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
