while training camp for NHL teams remains only a bubble on the horizon, the big stories around the league are still theoretical and in the domain of imagination. There isn’t much tangible going on in the league in August and early September. So people have to hang their hat on what someone might say. When it’s the best player in the league like Connor McDavid, those hooks can take on more weight.
Most of the focus in this pre-training camp phase has been on McDavid’s insistence at Canada’s Olympic Orientation clam bake and talent show that he’s focused on winning a Stanley Cup with Edmonton, but if he doesn’t suspect that it’ll happen there he’s open to taking the show on the road. It wasn’t a groundbreaking revelation, as this is the guy most able to write his own ticket in recent memory.
However, even any slight hint that McDavid could find a different zip code for his pyscho killer taste in interior design will send Oilers fans into a deep froth, so it’s GM Stan Bowman’s job to try and quell a plethora of pitchforks from arriving at his door. That’s what Bowman was attempting yesterday.
The problem is, in terms Albertans can better understand, Bowman is a lot of hat but very little cattle. At least I think so, as I’ve never stepped in horseshit and thus don’t have the experience to know if I’m using that right.
Bowman arrived in Edmonton with three rings to show off from his time in Chicago, as well as a rep as a coward and weasel after the Kyle Beach controversy came to light. Cleary, the Oilers didn’t care enough about the latter, but the former shouldn’t have as much luster as it does, either.
It’s important to remember that Bowman was handed that GM job in Chicago after the Cup-worthy roster was built. While he was Dale Tallon’s assistant and had some sort of voice in the acquisition/drafting of the players that would make the Hawks what they would become, he wasn’t in charge.
Once he got the reins, Bowman basically onlky added Brandon Saad through the draft and Johnny Oduya via trade, and that’s about all he was able to augment to the core he was simply handed. That’s not nothing, but it hardly suggests a GM who can operate around the two huge contracts McDavid and Leon Draisaitl are going to have.
Worse yet, as Bowman went longer in the GM chair in Chicago, the worse it got. His deadline in 2016 was an utter disaster, as he tried to buttress the Hawks into one more run, moving along Phillip Danault and others for the likes of Thomas Fleischmann and Dale Weise, neither of whom could skate a shift in the playoffs without their brain dripping out their ear. His attempt to replace Oduya with Trevor Daley ended up predictably hilarious, as Daley spent most of his time as a Hawk passing to players who were attempting to go off for a change.
It only got worse in the ensuing seasons, as Bowman’s finishing move was to just bring back players who had already played for the Hawks. Kris Versteeg, Andrew Ladd, Brian Campbell, Patrick Sharp, Oduya all got second or third runs, and all worked out as well as sequels tend to. Bowman’s run basically went fully in the ditch when he went to war with is coach, Joel Quenneville, and traded away the latter’s favorites in Artemi Panarin and Niklas Hjalmarsson simply out of spite (the Panarin trade was the second of three Brandon Saad trades that Bowman lost).
If Oilers fans want some consolation, at least Bowman was handed a Final-worthy core in Edmonton just like he was in Chicago. The problem is this one is older than the one he got with the Hawks, requiring more upkeep, and we’ve seen how that goes.
But hey, a good last name and fortuitous circumstances have taken bigger frauds than Bowman to higher places.
Can Stan Bowman Fake His Way To A Connor McDavid Extension?