A Different Kind Of Ingredient

Just a quick post this afternoon, but I wanted to get something up touching on Bob Stauffer’s tweet from yesterday. There’s a lot of good info in this brief message from the Oilers’ top insider.

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Edmonton’s shouldn’t be trading the tenth overall pick for help. This should be the last time during the McDavid era that Edmonton gets to add a piece to the cluster in this part of the draft. Take a player and enjoy the results of it a few years down the line. It’ll be well worth it.

I’m also all about not diving into the free agent pool and chasing the big fish. Yeah, James Neal would be the sexy name to add, but odds are he’s going to be overpaid and he’s going to disappoint. Edmonton got the biggest fish in 2016 (Milan Lucic) and many are chasing him out of town two seasons later.

Big game hunting in free agency is a losing game.

Which Brings Me To…..

The most interesting part of Stauffer’s tweet, by far, which touches on the club moving out a contract with term for a different “ingredient”.

I find this interesting for a number of different reasons. Are the Oilers moving away from the big and heavy brand Chiarelli wanted when he first arrived? If that’s the case, perhaps Milan Lucic’s stint in Edmonton will be a short one and he could be on the way out.

People scoff at the idea, but I can tell you with certainty that NHL clubs do have interest in Lucic still and believe that he will rebound. He does have trade value, and clubs like Vancouver and Montreal still covet him as an asset.

I also think, as Jason Gregor pointed out yesterday, that Lucic would be receptive to a change of scenery.

The other options? Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Oscar Klefbom. I do believe Klefbom is being discussed, but I don’t think Chiarelli is exactly forcing him out the door. If Edmonton can get an upgrade who shoots right, it’s my belief they will pull the trigger.

I don’t think Chiarelli has any appetite, at this time, to move RNH.

Final Thoughts:

Adding a different ingredient, to me, means one of two things. The club could trade Lucic for a similiar contract who is more skilled (Loui Eriksson, David Krejci) or they could move Klefbom for a similiar type of player who shoots right (Rasmus Ristolainen). Those moves would send a contract with term out and add something different to Edmonton’s roster.

That’s my opinion on the matter, but I’m curious to hear what you all think! Oh, and this is also just an opinion, but I think the Oilers might be pretty close on this if people are talking like this. I wouldn’t travel far from the Twitter machine once the Final ends.