Oilers openly admit massive failure from Ken Holland in trade

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Noel Drolet
July 17, 2024 (2:09 PM)

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Another pick by Holland continues to age poorly as all the picks around him are becoming NHLers.

With the recent trading of prospect Xavier Bourgault, it's easy to see Jackson all but admitting that Holland had made a terrible decision with their 2021 first round draft pick. Drafts are always easy to look back at and see the best picks that could've been made, but few picks have been fumbled as hard as the Oilers' first rounder, trading back to draft Bourgault when there were two amazing picks they could have had in the meantime.

Holland made the pick at 22, one pick before the Dallas Stars selected Wyatt Johnston at 23rd overall. Johnston had already looked like a very solid prospect, but then proceeded to explode for 124 points in 68 games on the following season with the Windsor Spitfires.

For Holland to pass on the guy who proceeded to immediately have one of the most productive seasons in the WHL is frankly embarrassing. Especially so when you see that 3 years later, Bourgault has been traded for a 4th and another prospect after some seasons of struggling in the AHL.

This is to add on to the pick swap that all Oilers fans are already well aware of, where Holland originally traded back from pick 20 in that draft. That pick ended up being Jesper Wallstedt, who is a fantastic goalie prospect who got selected by the Minnesota Wild.

It's obvious that drafting was a terrible issue for Holland, as the Oilers have had numerous picks during his tenure that have just been questionable. This was obvious enough, but Jeff Jackson even all but confirmed that Holland was not equipped at all to deal with analytics and player development and couldn't catch up to other GMs in the modern era.

It's terrible for an acting GM to say this about a former GM, but even worse when you consider just how long Jackson has been able to watch Holland for. Jackson is still trying to clean up all of Holland's terrible mistakes that he made as GM, and hopefully a compete GM can finally take this team to the success they should've had for many previous years.