Will the Oilers Produce Offencively

I've been thinking alot lately of how the Oilers will do scoring goals next year with a group of forwards that are either boarder line NHLers or pretty good AHLers. The more i thought about it the best way to look into the future is to see what the recent past tells us. Alot of Oiler fans last year got all excited about the Oilers filling the oppositions net with a lot of pucks and in the end the Oilers were one of the worst offencive teams in the NHL.

So Here Goes.

At center the Oilers have Horrcoff, Stoll, Reasoner and Pouliot. Looking at the last 3 year of NHL play it's reasonable to assume that this goup of players should be good for 58 goals.
At left wing the Oilers have Torres, Moreau, Sanderson and Nilsson. I figure this group should be good for about 70 goals.
At right wing the Oilers have Hemsky, Pissani, Thorenson and Stortini. This group of players is the weak link in the Oilers already weak offence. It's lead by a player that, as good as he is, refuses to pass the puck. I can only see about 42 goals coming out of this group.
On defence the Oilers have Souray, Pitkanen, Staios, Tarnstrom, Green and Smid. I'm thinking the defence should be able to kick in 54 goals.
This isn't pretty but as it sits right now the Oilers should be able to score about 224 goals and will only have four 20 goal scorers. That means the almost 40% of the offence is going to come from those 4 players, lets hope none of them get hurt. 224 goals is about 29 more goals than the Oilers scored last year but in my mind not enough to get the Oilers into the playoffs yet. Lets hope we get some help up front before the season starts.

Oilers Sign Souray

Yesterday the Oilers signed Sheldon Souray to a 5 year contract worth $27 million (from what I've seen around the net). I'm happy the Oilers have finally signed a "big name" free agent. I also have mixed feelings about it being Souray tho, his +/- is a bit of a worry and I hope that he wasn't just signed by Kevin Lowe out of desperation to sign someone, anyone that was remotely big name to a contract.

It should be interesting to see how MacTavish handles Souray. MacTavish is not a coach that has ever dealt well or liked players that are laps defencively and Souray certainly has his defencive short comings. Who knows, maybe MacT will actually get Souray to play better in his own end. Stranger things have happened in Oil Country

I do like the fact the Souray isn't afraid to mix things up and should provide a lot of grit to a defence that suddenly doesn't look half bad at all. It now looks like the Oilers, who last season had no puck rushing defencemen, now have 3 puck rushing defencemen and 3 pretty good stay at home defencemen. Souray and Staios would be a good defencive pairing in my mind follow that up with Pitkanen and Green, and a third pairing of Tarnstrom and Smid and the Oiler defence actually looks pretty good.

One thing is clear after yesterday, if Craig Simpson can't get a power play working with Souray, Stoll, Pitkanen, Horrcoff and Hemsky then he's gotta go. The Oilers power play has always been suspect a best under Craig Simpson. Now he has all the tools in the world and ther should be now excuses.

I'm liking the look of our goaltending situation, the defence looks like something that belongs in the NHL and should produce points, now it's time for Lowe to go out and get a top 6 forward, because right now the offence looks like one hell of and AHL line up.

I'm Back!

God it's been for ever since I posted here. Since my last post we got the washer fixed (thanks Sears - I think?) Never buy anything from Sears that needs repairing.
Then in the end of may was the Wedding! It was great, everyone had a blast and the weather, wile not warm was perfect for pictures (I'll post some later). The honeymoon was awesome, we had a great cruise around the Caribbean. We swam with dolphins in Mexico, that had to the be the highlight. (Again I'll post pics soon).