“If you must rebuild, then this is the way to do it,” proclaimed the National Post, before declaring that the team’s playoff drought was soon to end.
“You feel it in the room,” the team’s head coach was quoted as saying. “I feel it and sense it, and normally if the coach feels it you're the last guy to feel the optimism of improvement.”
The National Post further recorded one of the club’s young stars expressing his optimism about the Oilers contending in the near future. Another professed excitement about the foundation of great core guys the team had assembled.
That article was written in 2008. Coach Craig MacTavish left the team, returned again and is now the general manager. The core group of that rebuild is now gone, including the two stars quoted in the piece; Andrew Cogliano was traded away three years ago, and Sam Gagner was dealt this summer. The hopeful resurgence of the team is still just over the horizon.
Now, in 2014, players, coaches and managers still preach optimism, but they do so with the greater care engendered by years of disa ...
Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NHL
Article written by Jonathan Willis
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