Friedman: "More scouting changes coming" for Oilers
/Elliotte Friedman was on Calgary’s Sportsnet 960 on Thursday afternoon.
On the coming Oilers announcement regarding Bob Green:
“Look. The Oilers have been very honest, from Bob Nicholson to Craig MacTavish publicly, that one of the biggest failures of the organization – never mind what’s happened to their first round picks – but the fact that they haven’t drafted anybody who’s made an impact later. And that’s a killer.
“You look at your Flames this year, guys who started to make an impact weren’t high draft picks. They were later picks who started to pan out a little bit. Drafting and developing is the lifeblood of a team, especially in the salary cap era.
“So I think ever since Nicholson and MacTavish started coming out and saying that, there were a lot of people in that organization who were on borrowed time. I think this is Step One of an overhaul of the team and organization. I think there'll be more scouting changes coming. I don’t know that anybody has actually been fired, but I do believe that Bob Green is going to be the guy.”
Later in the discussion:
“The other thing too is they are really in on a goalie by the name of Matt O’Connor, who is an NCAA player who is having a great year. He’s got a goals against average, last time I checked, below 2.00. There’s about five or six teams, at least – probably even more – that are really high on him, including a number of the Canadian teams. I know Edmonton really wants to bring him in.”
On if O’Connor, then, is the prominent, No. 1 college free agent this year:
“He’d be the No. 1 goalie, by a mile, from what I understand.
“There’s a couple other ones, and one of them is Bobby Baun’s great-grandson... he is a player who will have a lot of attention. He’s probably the guy who’s going to have the most teams chasing after him, after his season is done.”
Source: Sportsnet 960/ Transcript: Nichols on Hockey
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