Bob McKenzie was on the Jason Gregor Show earlier today and they talked about a plethora of things including McKenzie’s upcoming Q&A event in Leduc on July 5th, the expansion draft, and most importantly to us Oilers fans, Jordan Eberle.
Here’s the Eberle segment from that interview:
JG: You’re expecting him (Eberle) to be moved in the next 24hrs?
BM: Well, I kinda qualify it as I usually do a million ways to Sunday. I mean, in this business there are no absolutes and there are no guarantees. Everybody wants them. Everybody wants me to come on and say,
“Yup! Jordan Eberle is getting traded for sure. He’s going to be gone.”
I can’t say that because I don’t know that. But what I do know is when you start to connect the dots a little bit and the dots that I’m connecting, we know that there are 6 or 7 teams that have been in relatively serious degrees of negotiations with the Oilers on Jordan Eberle.
We know that this is not just someone calling up and saying,
“Hey! I’d be interested in Eberle if you’re going to trade him!”
The talks on those fronts have been more substantive and therefore if you’ve got that many teams that far down the road, logic suggests that there’s a chance that a deal could get consummated.
The mere fact that they are going down this road, at this time, gives you a pretty strong indication that at some point Jordan Eberle is going to be traded.
Now, I said this on the morning show, there’s no fire here but the mere fact that the Oilers are getting as serious as they are about talking to these multiple teams and that there is the specter of an expansion draft that might motivate some of these other teams who are interested in Jordan Eberle to do that deal now, it leads you to believe it’s quite possible it could happen but far from guaranteed.
And as I said this morning, Jordan Eberle doesn’t need to be traded at all if you don’t want to, that’s the first thing that people should remember. The second thing is, if you do say, “We gotta trade Jordan Eberle.”, the financial aspect of his contract, you probably don’t need that money for a year until McDavid kicks in and some of the other things that will be happening. You can probably get away without trading Jordan Eberle and absorb Draisaitl’s money into the equation but the fact that he didn’t have a great playoffs, the fact that there is still substantial interest in him, and the fact that they are talking to so many teams leads me to believe that it’s more likely than not that Jordan Eberle is going to get traded.
It really does look like Eberle’s time in Edmonton is finished and after two seasons under McLellan and Chiarelli is it not plain to see that his style of play simply doesn’t fit in? It’s too bad though, I liked Jordan Eberle and he’s a very skilled player. He’s going to make another team very happy but when your time is up, it’s up.
You can listen to the whole interview below!
