Offense look pretty good.
Defense looks average.
Goaltending has to scare the crap out of oilers fans. The most important position is their biggest question mark.

This team can either win a couple rounds in the playoffs or 40 year old mike smith could have one of his bad years and they can miss the playoffs all together.

This is the best lineup they have had in years, but losing Bear is gonna hurt them, Ceci isn't a real replacement.
I know they say that they are shopping for a goalie, and they need to, make a trade and then they really finally will have a chance to go far.

I see that you prepared this post before KY signed on September 18th, but nothing significant has changed since then other than Archibald's unavailability, which I also see you've taken into account.

I'll echo @SociallyHawkward's analysis: the offense is great, the defense is below average and the goaltending is really suspect. I think that their success will depend on how well the goalies do.

Cant argue with any of that.

Goalie will cost them an arm and a leg. But I agree.

Oops. You are right, sorry it was an old team. But it is close to the amount. But thank you

Well, it's nice to see a guy who knows his own team so well that he can be so accurate looking into the future (not just about Yamamoto). Very impressive!

Maybe leverage Kleffbom+ picks and or prospects to a team that needs LITR help to pull a Tampa Bay and add a piece for a run, but that isn't likely until at least mid-season so you need some wins in the first half. Then just get whatever you can for one of the current goalies at the deadline.
Islanders and Varlamov could be a fit for that.

Oh the team probably wont look like this.
Archibald will be back and the 4th line to have 3 rookies is never a good idea.
Archie will be in place of Marody most likely.
The rest is not much of a debate.

I would love to have Varlamov as in many many posts I have done, but if I was the Islanders I would keep him just in case for playoffs

Hmm... the Oilers goaltending tandem has been pretty decent over the past 2 years. They've allowed 2.91 GA/GP (12th least in the league) despite facing 31.4 shots/GP (21st least in the league). I'm not that concerned - I expect both Smith and Koskinen to regress to their 2-year averages which, with the amount of firepower they have up front, should be enough for them to win a round or two. IMO there's zero chance (barring significant injuries to multiple core players) that they miss the playoffs.

Archibald isn't unavailable. He's finishing his quarantine and will join the training camp tomorrow.


Pretty much true for every team.

and a lot more o zone time

Just ITCHING to correct me, weren't you?

For the record, I hope that Archibald, Stalock and Toews all make complete recoveries. But athletes contracting COVID have different prognoses than post-40 survivors.