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By RILEY RADOBENKO
Columnist

Imagine a National Hockey League (NHL) team with a first line that comprises of Taylor Hall, Connor McDavid and Matthew Barzal. That could’ve been reality for the Edmonton Oilers, but Peter Chiarelli had other plans.

After a four-year tenure where he did absolutely nothing but ruin the team, Chiarelli was recently fired by the Oilers, and now the organization is looking for their fifth general manager (GM) in 11 years.

Now to be fair, the team was a total mess when Chiarelli inherited it in 2015, but instead of properly rebuilding or acquiring the appropriate players to make their lineup better, he made the problem 10 times worse. It was simply because the formula he was using to build a successful, winning team was completely wrong.

Let me explain.

From 2006 to 2015, Chiarelli was the GM of the Boston Bruins. In those years, they were a very competitive team that won a lot of games. In fact, they made two appearances in the Stanley Cup finals, winning the title in 2011.

The Bruins have always won by playing a grittier, physical style of game. The speed and skill might not always be there, but it is constantly mentally and physically exhausting to play against them.

Due to this style of game, star players don’t always fit into the Bruins lineup. In 2009, Chiarelli traded Phil Kessel to the Toronto Maple Leafs for draft picks. The one draft pick ended up being Tyler Seguin, whom Chiarelli traded to the Dallas Stars in 2013.

Now I’m sure the Bruins would love to have both these guys in their present day lineup, but Chiarelli was able to get away with trading these guys because the team still won a handful of games.

So when he was hired by Edmonton, Chiarelli tried to “Bruin-ify” the Oilers by replicating that same formula. The problem is the Bruins are probably the only team in the league that can win by playing that style of game, so Chiarelli’s grand idea ended up being a colossal failure.

In his tenure as GM of the Oilers, Chiarelli made the following trades:

Traded: 16th Overall pick at the 2015 draft to the New York Islanders. Acquired: Griffin Reinhart. Result: Reinhart is playing for the Vegas Golden Knights minor league affiliate. The draft pick became Matthew Barzal, who won rookie of the year in the 2017/18 season after recording 85 points.

Traded: Justin Schultz to the Pittsburgh Penguins. Acquired: Third round draft pick at the 2016 draft. Result: The draft pick became Filip Berglund, who has never received an NHL contract. Justin Schultz became a top-four defenseman and two-time Stanley Cup Champion.

Traded: Taylor Hall, who wasn’t really producing with the Oilers, not that anybody was, to the New Jersey Devils. Acquired: Adam Larsson. Result: Larsson never reached his full potential. Hall won the MVP of the league for the 2017/18 season after recording 93 points.

Traded: Nail Yakupov to St. Louis. Acquired: No-name prospect and a third-round draft pick. Result: Neither team won the trade. Yakupov was a bust, but would’ve been a good third or fourth line player if the Oilers didn’t ruin his development and destroy his confidence like they do to every guy that plays there.

Traded: Jordan Eberle to the New York Islanders. Acquired: Ryan Strome. Result: Eberle has been a 25 goal scorer throughout his career. Strome couldn’t duplicate those stats, so they traded him to the New York Rangers for Ryan Spooner, who the Oilers sent to the minor leagues after a month, essentially trading Jordan Eberle for nobody.

Let me run through that one more time.

Since the start of 2015, Chiarelli traded away Barzal, Schultz, Hall, Yakupov and Eberle all in favor of bringing in guys like Zack Kassian and Patrick Maroon. He’s going after guys that play the Boston Bruins style of hockey.

It was the same deal with his free-agent signings. He gave big, long-term contracts to Milan Lucic and Andrej Sekera. Those guys don’t fit the speed or skill to be playing with McDavid or Drasaitl. All those signings do is cripple the Oilers in terms of the salary cap for the future.

If Chiarelli never made any of those trades, the current day lineup of the Edmonton Oilers would’ve been Hall, McDavid and Barzal on the first line. The second line could’ve featured Eberle, Draisaitl with somebody else. The third line could’ve been Nugent-Hopkins with Yakupov and somebody else, and then you fill the fourth line in with depth players. Defensively, Justin Schultz would be on the second defensive pairing behind a good, young one-two punch of Oscar Klefbom and Darnell Nurse.

On top of that, I didn’t even include Jesse Puljujarvi or anybody else drafted after these moves were made or Laurent Brossoit, the goaltender they let walk to free agency this past offseason, who now has, at the time of writing, a 10-1-0 record with 2.01 GAA (Goals Against Average) with the Winnipeg Jets.

Between those 11 guys I just mentioned, they combined for 573 points in 2017/18. With the exception of Puljujarvi, this is the team they would’ve had without three years of drafting or any other free agent acquisitions.

Instead, look at the team the Oilers have now. They wouldn’t stand a chance of winning in a head to head game against the roster the Oilers could’ve had. Their entire roster from the 2017/18 season combined for 579 points. So, in the 2017/18 season, the 11 guys I mentioned were within five points of matching the combined total of all 31 players that put on an Oilers jersey that season. Think about that.

And the worst part? Before Chiarelli was fired, he threw one last dagger at the team. One of their goaltenders, Mikko Koskinen, who you probably have never heard of, has played 32 career NHL games at the time of writing. He’s won half of those. So with that remarkable statistic, Chiarelli awarded him with a three-year, $13.5-million contract extension. For a 30-year old unproven NHL goaltender? What a joke.

It was a great job firing Chiarelli. This was an absolutely warranted firing. If the great fans of Edmonton had it their way, I’m sure they would’ve decapitated Chiarelli, put his head on a stick and marched around town cheering, MacBeth-style.

But in hindsight, he’s the real winner. He made a complete mess of this team, and now it’s somebody else’s problem and he doesn’t have to worry about it.

And I get it. It’s wasn’t just him. It’s every single person that is part of their hockey operations staff and ownership group. But whose fingerprints are all over the horrible moves that were made? Chiarelli’s.

So how do the Oilers fix this dumpster fire? Do they trade McDavid? There’s no help coming from the American Hockey League (AHL) and none of their prospects are generational players that’ll save the day. And there is no way in hell that any already established players in the league want to go there.

In my opinion, they need to find somebody that is serious about turning this team around that’ll tell it how it is, be accountable and bring in the right people both on and off the ice. That means another rebuild, which means it wll be another three to five years of Connor McDavid’s career wasted.

Sorry Oilers fans.