The bottom line is you’re going to have to pay a good price for a good player.
Those were Peter Chiarelli’s words after he traded Taylor Hall to the New Jersey Devils for defenseman Adam Larsson.
Some would say that Chiarelli paid a huge price for a pretty good player.
Chiarelli, what were you thinking? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!?!
Let me try to get inside the mind of the Oilers’ GM.
1. Chiarelli was determined to fix the defense.
Unlike his predecessor, Peter Chiarelli was not reasonably comfortable going forward with the same defense. Andrew Ference and Nikita Nikitin won’t be playing for the Oilers in 2016-17…thankfully. And Chiarelli didn’t think Justin Schultz had Norris Trophy potential, so “The Chose Us One” was shipped to Pittsburgh at the trade deadline. Chiarelli is not looking at next year as another developmental year. It’s time to win. And to do so, changes had to be made.
To make those changes, Chiarelli was willing to do bold things. It’s clear that a man with a mustache like Chiarelli’s isn’t afraid of what people might think. So he bit the bullet and traded an elite winger for a player he views as a top pairing defender.
If the Oilers didn’t improve their defense this offseason, it would have been a great embarrassment to Chiarelli. And I don’t think he’s done adding to the defense. It looks like he’s got his sights set on Tyson Barrie. In my opinion, Barrie would be the perfect addition to finish the defense–a top 4 defender who can quarterback the powerplay. (Hopefully Ryan Nugent-Hopkins won’t be traded to acquire him.) Maybe it won’t happen, but I’m dreaming of an Oilers’ defense that looks like this:
Oscar Klefbom – Adam Larsson
Andrej Sekera – Tyson Barrie
Brandon Davidson – Mark Fayne
Darnell Nurse/Jordan Oesterle/Griffin Reinhart
2. Chiarelli wasn’t being offered fair value for the Oilers’ $6 million dollar men.
One rumour I heard was Hall and the fourth overall pick for Alex Pietrangelo. That’s an overpay. It looks like the Oilers were going to lose any trade that involved Hall, Nugent-Hopkins, or Jordan Eberle because teams weren’t willing to give the Oilers a fair return for those players (perhaps they’re seen as tainted from all the Oilers’ losing). And I also think that trading Nugent-Hopkins or Eberle wasn’t going to come close to getting the Oilers a top pairing defenseman.
3. Larsson is a very good defenseman and has the potential to be an elite defenseman.
Larsson put up only 18 points (3 goals, 15 assists) last season. There are two good reasons for this: (1) Larsson had the toughest zone starts of any regular defenseman, and (2) he didn’t get any time on the powerplay. However, according to Devils’ blogger Todd Cordell, Larsson has been good at even strength scoring:
No D has started a higher % of his shifts in the DZ than Larsson from 2014-16. Still has more 5v5 pts than Shattenkirk, Fowler, Jones, etc.
— Todd Cordell (@ToddCordell) June 30, 2016
On the Devils’ blog All About New Jersey, C. J. Turtoro wrote back in February,
Take a look at Larsson’s WoWYs. Larsson has played around 450 minutes with Greene and about 100 without him in “Close” situations–when the game is still up for grabs. Together they have a 49% Corsi, so they are roughly even. When Larsson is alone he has tougher zone starts (32% for Larsson, 44% for Greene), and yet his Corsi is 53.7% in comparison to Greene’s 46.5%.
David Johnson, though he thinks the Oilers lost the trade, had lots of nice things to say about Larsson:
I believe the Oilers may have picked up a real good defensive defenseman, maybe one the league’s best (still a bit early to say that yet). I look at a guy like Hjalmarsson in Chicago. He doesn’t get all the accolades of Toews, Kane, Keith or even Seabrook but he is an incredibly valuable players on that team an done of the best defensive defensemen in the league. If the Oilers get this in Larsson they will be filling a much needed and an incredibly important role. Is that worth Taylor Hall? Almost certainly not but Larsson could be an incredibly important player for them for the next decade and guys like him don’t grow on trees either.
Lots of people are saying that the Oilers could have signed Jason Demers instead of trading Hall for Larsson. Demers eventually signed a 5-year, $22.5 million contract with the Panthers. However, we don’t know if Demers wanted to sign with the Oilers–though he must have had some interest in doing so since he visited Edmonton prior to July 1st. We also don’t know if Demers would have agreed to a similar contract to play for the Oilers. Finally, in my opinion, Larsson, though he’s 5 years younger, is already a better defenseman than Demers and has the potential to be an elite defender.
4. Chiarelli was willing to lose a trade in order to make the team more balanced.
In chess, sometimes it’s necessary to sacrifice your queen in order to win the match. I think that’s probably what Chiarelli was thinking when he made the Hall-Larsson trade.
The Oilers now have a top pairing of Klefbom and Larsson–both young players on good contracts (combined cap hit of $8.34 million)–which has the potential to be very good. And the loss of Hall was offset somewhat by the signing of Milan Lucic and the addition of draft pick Jesse Puljujari–projected by many to become an elite winger.
Would I have preferred a solution to the Oilers’ woes that included keeping Taylor Hall? Yes. Could there many been a solution without trading Hall? Maybe.
In the end, Chiarelli gave up Hall and lost the trade. But on the whole, the team, in my opinion, looks better on paper.
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