August 21, 2023 by Ryan Lotsberg

CEO Jeff Jackson said that he will seek to bring a new perspective to the Edmonton Oilers, and he went on to speak about player personnel, scouting, and analytics in the same breath. In case you missed part one of this series, I wrote about the Oilers Player Personnel department and some potential changes we could see under Jackson. Today’s piece will focus on Jackson’s potential impact on the Oilers Amateur Scouting department.

Jackson would have done scouting of his own as an agent in pursuit of young players to represent. I’m curious to see what changes Jackson will make to the Oilers Amateur Scouting department, and I’ll be curious to see his influence emerge over the course of next few drafts.

The Amateur Scouting department is currently led by Tyler Wright (Diretor, Amateur Scouting and Player Personnel). Wright has been Ken Holland’s right hand man since 2013, going back to their time with the Detroit Red Wings. Wright was previously a Development Coach for the Columbus Blue Jackets from 2007-2013.

Wright’s first draft with the Red Wings was the 2014 draft. Dylan Larkin was the first pick for the Red Wings that year. He’s turned into their franchise centrepiece. The other first round picks drafted while Wright was there were Evgeni Svechnikov, Denis Cholowski, Michael Rasmussen, Filip Zadina, and Joe Veleno. Only Rasmussen and Veleno are still with the organization, and they are near the bottom of the forward group in Detroit. Svechnikov and Cholowski have both bounced around the league and have less than 200 NHL games each. Zadina just had his contract terminated and has since signed with the San Jose Sharks.

Filip Hronek is the only player that Detroit drafted after the first round during Wright’s tenure that has played over 130 NHL games. Hronek was traded to the Vancouver Canucks last year. Only seven other players that were taken after the first round while Wright was in Detroit have played any NHL games at all. All in all, fourteen out of 41 players that were drafted by Detroit while Wright was there have played NHL games. The list is decidedly lacking in star power and quality. 

Wright’s success rate hasn’t gotten much better in Edmonton. The 2019 draft was Wright’s first with the Oilers, and entering their draft plus five seasons, none of the 2019 class have cemented regular roles on the Oilers roster as of yet. Philip Broberg is the closest. He’s played 69 NHL games in a sheltered role over the last two seasons. Only Broberg (69), Dylan Holloway (51), and Matej Blumel (6) have NHL games to their credit. Blumel was curiously not signed by the Oilers in time, and those six NHL games came with the Dallas Stars. I wouldn’t be surprised if Wright becomes one of Jackson’s first targets for potential significant change.

Chief Amateur Scout Bob Green has been with the Oilers in that capacity since 2015. He spent two seasons as a Scout with the Oilers before that, and six seasons as the General Manager of the Edmonton Oil Kings prior to joining the Oilers. 

Green’s first draft with the Oilers was in 2013. Since then, 21 of the 68 players that the Oilers have drafted have played more than one NHL game. The Oilers have long struggled to find gems after the first round of the draft, but that is slowly starting to change. Stuart Skinner and Ryan McLeod appear to be establishing themselves as important pieces of the roster. Vincent Desharnais’s emergence last season was a pleasant surprise as well. It should be noted that all three of these players were picked before Wright’s arrival with the team.

2016 second round pick Tyler Benson just signed with the Henderson Silver Knights after not being able to land a spot on the Oilers. Benson was a pick that I was excited about because he had so much success in his minor hockey career in Edmonton. However, McDavid’s former Eerie Otters teammate and winger Alex DeBrincat went seven picks after Benson did. Jordan Kyrou, taken three picks after Benson, also would’ve been a great pick. Even Rasmus Asplund, who was taken immediately after Benson, would’ve been a better pick. Drafting is always an inexact science, but that 31st pick was as close to a first rounder as it gets without it actually being a first rounder. It was an important pick that the Oilers got wrong.

The Oilers’ 2015 draft should be noted. It was the Connor McDavid draft; but Caleb Jones, Ethan Bear, and John Marino were all drafted by the Oilers that year as well. None of the three are with the Oilers anymore, but all three have over 200 NHL games and counting. The success of those picks turned into Warren Foegele and a year of Duncan Keith.

Marino, a sixth round pick in 2015, was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins for a 2021 sixth round pick (Shane LaChance). LaChance is off to Boston College this season, and as Bruce Curlock (@bcurlock) wrote for OilersNation, LaChance knows how to score goals. A sixth round pick is usually nothing more than a lottery ball. Marino turned into a wild success, and there’s still a LaChance that the Marino pick turns into a useful player for the Oilers (I’ll see myself out). Interestingly enough, Matvei Petrov was taken just six picks before LaChance. The 2021 sixth round could be a particularly fruitful one for the Oilers.

Former Oilers third rounder Dmitri Samorukov being traded for Klim Kostin last season was another great example of a Green mid-round pick turning into a useful asset. Kostin gave the bottom six a real shot in the arm last season. The team couldn’t squeeze Kostin in under the cap for the coming season, but he was the incentive for Detroit to take Kailer Yamamoto’s contract off of Holland’s hands. That gave the team the cap space to go out and get Connor Brown.

Some of the picks taken in Green’s tenure turning into beneficial assets for the organization is great and all, but the Oilers need to see the reward of drafting and developing their own talent more often. Having success after the first round of the draft will be vital to long-term success for the Oilers in this era where they will often pick low in the first round if they don’t trade first round picks away. Tampa Bay’s success is a great example of the impact of post first round picks contributing meaningfully to extended runs of success. McLeod, Skinner, and Desharnais represent a start, but others need to emerge as well.

Related: Jackson’s Potential Impact on the Oilers- Part One: Player Development

Also, the first line of Holland’s quote on Steve Staios during his season ending media availability revealed that the Oilers didn’t have a scout dedicated to Ontario. There are nine amateur scouts on staff for the Oilers, and not one is based in Ontario apparently. It’s incredibly peculiar for an NHL team to not have an amateur scout dedicated to Ontario given the volume of elite NHL talent that comes out of the OHL. Holland did say that they want to hire an Ontario scout. I’ll be watching to see if Jackson adds one.

Watch out for part three of this series where I’ll discuss the Oilers Professional Scouting department and the team’s use of analytics.