Coming from an Edmonton Oilers point of view, BLH provides you with excerpts from the latest NHL news, rumors, and speculation from all of the internet’s best sites including Spector’s Hockey, The Fourth Period, NHL Trade Talk, The Hockey Writers, Sportsnet, The Athletic, TSN and more!
The Cult of Hockey
Montreal Canadiens were largely built by aggressive trading. Any lessons there for the Edmonton Oilers?
One season ago, albeit a couple of months later in the year, our fair city played host to the last two rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs, which took place in the Edmonton Bubble. With our local Oilers long since out of the running after an upset defeat to Chicago Blackhawks in the Round of 24, we had time on our hands to examine each of the four survivors, to analyze the make-up of their respective rosters and to run side-by-side comparisons to that of the Oilers.
What did we learn? That there’s more than one way to build a contender.
- The eventual Stanley Cups champions Tampa Bay Lightning built the core of their powerhouse team through the draft, picking a few superstars in the first round and just as many or more in the second, third, and beyond, then found a pair of undrafted entry-level free agents who panned out in spades. A couple of crucial trades and crafty free agent signings filled out their defence, but for the most part they danced with the ones they brung along.
- The team the Bolts beat in the Eastern Conference Finals, the New York Islanders, had similarly built through the draft, though with fewer top end stars. They had used both the UFA and trade market to great advantage in filling out their team with useful depth players, relying on team chemistry and cohesiveness along with great coaching to go deep.
- The Dallas Stars made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals on the backs of a few great picks on Day 2 of the draft over the years, and a flurry of activity bringing in older free agents and veterans via the trade route to make one big run at the Grail.
- Finally, the Vegas Golden Knights were a new team built through an entirely different channel than the others. They put together the majority of their team through the 2017 expansion draft plus a few highly-rewarding side deals, and a handful of subsequent trades of players acquired through the expansion process for solid returns. Unlike the other contenders, they had very little contribution from players they had drafted themselves, who were (and largely remain) still on the vine.
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