Goals For and the Standings

The Edmonton Oilers have scored 185 goals (including SO) thus far in the 2007-2008 season.

The following playoff teams are in comparable range:
Calgary has 188 (12 games over .500). San Jose has 182 (18 games over .500). Anaheim has 173 (13 games over .500). Minnesota has 185 (11 games over .500). Colorado has 186 (11 games over .500)

The difference between these teams and the Oilers?

The Oilers allow too many goals against. 206 to be exact. 2nd worst in the Conference, only behind LA.

What does this mean?/Other notes
-The talk of the Oilers needing more scoring to win hockey games isn't neccessarily true. What they need is more outscorers.
-What they need is more veterans like Pisani who aren't on the ice too much for GA. This is why many were advocating signing Mike Johnson
-Losing Pisani until December was a massive loss. Losing Moreau for all but 26 games has hurt the team. Losing Raffi Torres, who is a strong EV player as numbers show, is also not a good thing.
-It's also no coincidence that ever since Horcoff's injury, the 1st line has suffered (Hemsky -9. Penner -10)
-Goaltending early on contributed to the Oilers woes. On the flip side, there is a possibilty Garon will not match this season's performance level next year.
-The Gagner's, Cogliano's, Brodziak's, Grebeshkov's, Smid's, and Greene's, have up until recenlty, just killed the Oilers in the short run
-Veteran's in Stoll and Reasoner have been massive disappointments


Overall Delivering Message
-The Oilers being 26th in the league should not be surprising at all.
-Rookies rarely help your team win hockey games, and for a winning team, you typically bring them up slowly in singles rather than in bunches
-After around 50 games, the rookies and younger players have demonstrated improvement and an ability to tread water in the NHL.
-This will help next year, but there is still lots of work to be done to make this team a playoff contender. 2009-2010 is more realistic. It's simply put, not a quick process.

So what do we do?
We patiently wait.