The NHL HATES The Edmonton Oilers!

The NHL HATES The Edmonton Oilers!

Hello, Oilers fans. Austin here and welcome to today’s video where we’re going to discuss why the NHL is screwing the Mton Oilers over at every turn that they can. Now, there’s going to be a lot of fans that tune into this video, a lot of haters, a lot of non Oilers fans. They’re going to tune in. They’re going to go into the comment section be like, “The NHL doesn’t hate you. Maybe your team should follow the rules.” Blah blah blah blah blah. Listen, I have a few pieces of evidence to show that the NHL really does like to pick apart the Oilers a little bit more than the rest of the league, and they don’t give the Oilers that benefit of the doubt. Why am I even talking about this today? What is the reasoning for that? Well, Frank Saravelli, he put out a tweet saying that sources say the NHL and NHLPA have agreed to a rolling implementation schedule for CBA changes. Among them, the new playoff salary cap system will come into effect this season for the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs. So, with that new salary cap system for the playoffs, that essentially means that teams that enter the postseason, whatever lineup you ice for game one of the playoffs, it has to be salary cap compliant. So, whatever the salary cap is, you cannot go over that. Now, in the previous system, teams would utilize long-term injured reserve or LTIR. And basically, they would essentially put players on LTIR and then add players at the trade deadline because LTIR didn’t technically count towards the cap in in a way. Now, this wasn’t a huge deal in the past. Before Vegas entered the league, a few teams kind of fiddled with it. You had the 2015 Blackhawks and 2015 Tampa Bay Lightning, but it wasn’t really until the Vegas Golden Knights came into the league that they started to kind of, you know, take advantage of that loophole in the salary cap system in the in the uh CBA, I should say, in the collective bargaining agreement that they had written down. Now, there’s a lot of fans, including Vegas fans, you’re going to come out and be like, “Well, yeah, I mean, if you can find a loophole, exploit it. Take advantage of it.” And I don’t disagree at all. I am not mad that Vegas made this mainstream and I am not mad that other teams followed Vegas’s lead. You had the Tampa Bay Lightning. You most recently had the Florida Panthers and the Edmonton Oilers who very publicly had Aander Kane on long-term injured reserve their entire NHL regular season and then he returned for game two of the playoffs, not game one. Well, why didn’t he return for game one? Well, it’s because the NHL was investigating them. So, what does that mean? Well, basically during the Stanley Cup final, it was announced that the NHL was examining the Oilers LTIR relief usage for Evander Kane. Now, nobody ever decided to question the LTIR use for Mark Stone in Vegas or or anyone else that has been using this. It it the it’s when the Edmonton Oilers decided to utilize this to help themselves and acquire Jake Walman and and put a team together for the playoffs that could potentially go on a big cup run. The Oilers decided, you know what? We’re going to exploit this loophole in the current CBA. And then the NHL went, you know what? We ignored the 10 plus years of teams exploiting this little loophole in the CBA, but as soon as the Mton Oilers do it, we are going to have that magnifying glass out. And you know, they’re probably wearing my glasses, too. Look at this. Huh? They’re taking my glasses. They’re looking over the rules like, “Oh, uhoh. Uh-oh. The Oilers are doing something that they’re not supposed to do. Only Vegas and Florida and Tampa and Chicago and all these other teams can do it.” But as soon as the Oilers did it, the league decided to investigate. Now, nothing actually came of this. However, during the summer, the NHLPA, the players association, and the NHL owners, they came to a new agreement on a new collective bargaining um contract, I guess you could say. So, there isn’t going to be a lockout for the foreseeable future. The players are not going to go on strike. And part of the solution to that loophole is to close it up. So, teams now when they enter the postseason, they have to be salary cap compliant. Now, you might be wondering, okay, this is one one instance of the league kind of taking a look at the Mino Oilers and being unfair towards them. Well, this is not the first instance, especially in the last few years. Back when James Neil was traded to the Mton Oilers from the Calgary Flames, the of course very well-known pandemic hit and uh at the end of the season had 19 goals when the season came to a pause in March of 2020. basically when the entire world shut down. Sporting world, actual world, all that horrible stuff that happened years and years and years ago. But when we take a look at the James Neil trade involving him and Milan Luchich, the Oilers owed the Calgary Flames a draft pick if James Neil scored 20 goals. Now, he had 19, right? So, basically, uh, the cult of hockey went over this. There were two conditions that had to have been met for the Oilers to send a 2020 third round pick to the Calgary Flames. Number one, Oilers forward James Neil has to record at least 21 goals in the 2019 2020 season. He did not. He scored 19 goals when the season came to an end. Number two, Flames forward Milan Luchi scores at least 10 fewer goals than James Neil in that 1920 season. Now, if only one or none of the conditions are met, the Mton Oilers will not be sending a draft pick to the Calgary Flames as part of the July 19th trade. So you might be looking at that and be like okay when the season came to a pause James Neil had 19 goals which was not 21. So therefore number one first condition was not met. Now James Neil did have more than 10 goals than Milan Luchich. So only one of these conditions was actually met at the time but the NHL decided 19 goals in 55 games. Uh he missed 16 of the Oilers 71 games. They decided you know what we’re going to prorrate this. We’re going to assume that the CO pause did not happen and James Neil did actually score 21 goals. They prrated his production to 22.8 goals, which is absolutely outrageous. And then the Edmonton Oilers owed the Calgary Flames a third round draft pick because of this. And that’s just wild to me because they didn’t really prorrate anything else that I’m aware of. And I don’t think there were any other trades or signings that were affected by this. So, I take a look at that. And then you might be going, “Okay, well that’s two instances. Maybe the league is kind of a little harsh.” Well, how about this third instance in the last several years? The Duncan Keith retirement and salary cap credit talk was more evidence of the Oilers being shafted by the NHL. This was written by Jim Parsons in June of 2022 for the hockey writers. So basically what happened with the Duncan Keith retirement is if he had retired before a certain time before a certain part of his contract had been met then this the then the Chicago Blackhawks would have been hit with a cap recapture penalty which would have given the Oilers a cap plus they would have it would have allowed the Oilers to have several million more in cap space available to them. They would have been given a cap credit of sorts. But the NHL decided you know what Duncan Keith’s retiring. It’s in the contract. it’s in the CBA. But actually, no. The Edmonton Oilers don’t get a cap recapture uh credit. They don’t get that extra money to them to use for whatever they want to use because Duncan Keith retired uh over his 38 season. There’s different rules when it comes to a certain players age and when they retire and what their contract looks like. Basically, the NHL put these rules in after the 20 uh or during the 2012 2013 lockout because you had those outrageous contracts being handed out to players like Ilia Kovalechuk, those 12 13-year deals. The NHL was really trying to crack down on teams backloading contracts with a ton of money knowing that players likely would not reach that threshold. And this is just several pieces of evidence of the Mton Oilers being shafted by the NHL. several pieces of evidence that I think is irrefutable proof that the NHL does not like the Mton Oilers and that they will go out of their way to investigate and punish the Oilers at any chance possible. Now, why the heck would they want to do that? Why are they picking on the Edmonton Oilers? A lot of you are going to be watching. You’re going to be posing that question. Why? Why the Oilers? I don’t know. Maybe they’re mad that Conor McDavid is on the team and the the lottery balls did not fall in the fortune of the Buffalo Sabres. We know the National Hockey League probably was not very happy with Conor McDavid going to Edmonton at the time. Now, this is speculation. This is not evidence, by the way. This is just we saw Bill Daly’s reaction to that gold the the the the gold uh placard that he was holding for the Oilers lottery win in 2015. We know that the league was probably very unhappy with that situation because of just how horrible the team had been performing for over a decade. Of course, the decade of darkness here in Edmonton. Many of us are familiar with that. In any case, we don’t know the reasoning behind why the NHL goes after certain teams, why they don’t go after other teams, why they punish certain teams, why they let certain teams just kind of do whatever they want. For the Edmonton Oilers, they are not allowed to do whatever they want. They are not given the benefit of the doubt. They have players that are given prorated stats. Like seriously, if I were go hockey dB or NHL.com and I click on James Neil for that 1920 season, is it going to say he scored 22.8 goals or is it going to say that he scored 19? Well, obviously it’s going to say that he scored 19 goals. The National Hockey League Week, Gary Bman, the owners, they are absolute trash. They should be constantly criticized for moments like this. And I don’t care if you’re the biggest Oilers hater imaginable. Until it happens to your team, it might be funny, but at the end of the day, as as an Oilers fan, I have to say something. I have to bring this up. I have to talk about it. I owe it to the fans who tune in. We owe it to each other to lift each other up and band together because the National Hockey League is horribly run. We know how bad Gary Bman runs the show. We know how much the owners run the show in in a way that I just personally disagree with. And this is just another evidence, another piece of evidence that shows the NHL wants to make sure that they are punishing teams like the Mton Oilers as much as possible. This is not a victim complex. Don’t come at me with that. This is just me posting and providing some context. uh some evidence for why I think the way I do and uh you can disagree with me or you can agree with me. I want to hear your thoughts in the comments section below. Make sure to smash that like button and as always, fight like a kid, fight like Ben. Let’s go Oilers. We’ll see you soon. Take care.

Today I discuss why Gary Bettman and the NHL HATE the Edmonton Oilers. From pro-rating goals, to forcing Edmonton to forfeit a draft pick, to closing the LTIR loophole, there are many instances of the League looking the other way for other teams but coming down hard on the Oilers to punish them whenever possible. Have YOUR say in the comment section below! #oilers #letsgooilers #nhl

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