Exactly one month from today, the NHL’s trade deadline will hit. The Edmonton Oilers were active on deadline day in 2020, acquiring D Mike Green, and F’s Tyler Ennis and Andreas Athanasiou. The Oilers will once again be in the fight for playoff positioning, but will they be active again in adding pieces?
GM Ken Holland, who made those moves, discussed the upcoming deadline on Thursday. Among the things he values? Size and depth, which the Oilers have been building.
“When you get into the playoffs, you need size and you need depth,” Holland began. “You’re going to have injuries. You either wear somebody down or they’re going to weigh you down. You need difference-makers, star players and you need goaltending. You lose lots of players along the way. They’re banged up, they’re beat up from blocking shots and you do it every second night for two months. You’re always looking at the Trade Deadline for either some size or experience. Players that have been in playoffs before, they know what it’s all about and are going to bring that level of experience to that locker room.”
The Oilers could look to add at four different spots in the lead up to the deadline. Free agent addition Kyle Turris hasn’t panned out, so a third-line center will certainly be on the shopping list. In fact, the club has sniffed around veterans Eric Staal and Brandon Sutter already.
Adding a left winger, due to Dominik Kahun’s ineffective play, is also on the table, as is adding a depth defenseman after Slater Koekkoek saw his season end due to injury in February. Of course, Holland has been on the hunt for goaltending help dating back to last year’s deadline.
That said, the Oilers are a deeper, better team than they were at the deadline in 2020. Holland admitted as much, and did say that will impact his game plan over the next month.
“I look at our team this year versus last year and I believe we’re deeper this year than we were last year. That part was by design,” Holland continued. “We’ve got a team of 29, so we went out and signed lots of veteran NHL players. Last year I don’t think we were quite as deep. We’re deeper on defense this year than we were a year ago. We’ve got 16 or 17 NHL forwards that are on our 29-man list.”
As a result, don’t expect Holland to make depth trades like last season. His deals for Green and Ennis would fall into that category.
“I’m not looking for depth,” Holland admitted. “Last year I made a couple of moves for depth and tried to swing at the fence a little bit on (Andreas) Athanasiou. I don’t think we need depth. I feel good about our depth. If there’s a player out there that we think can go into our lineup and have an impact more than depth, probably that would be something I look at.”
Players like that are very rarely moved at the trade deadline. There is one impact forward almost certain to move in the coming weeks, however. That would be Taylor Hall, who the Oilers pursued via trade last December and looked into in October when he was on the free agent market.
How active will the Oilers be? It certainly seems like this season will be quality over quantity at the deadline.
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