Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

Why A Boston/Edmonton Trade Won't Work

12/21/2014 at 8:25am EST

from Fluto Shinzawa of the Boston Globe,

Taylor Hall or Jordan Eberle would be good Bruins. They are 23 and 24 years old, respectively.

Hall is under contract through 2020 and Eberle is locked up until 2019, both at $6 million annually. They can score, which is a talent that is eluding the Bruins.

Yet the Bruins are missing two critical elements: tradable assets and cap space. Edmonton needs an ace goalie, centers, and defensemen. The Bruins aren’t dealing Tuukka Rask, last season’s Vezina Trophy winner. Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci are here for good. Zdeno Chara has a no-move clause. That leaves Dougie Hamilton and Carl Soderberg as the two players that would interest the Oilers for either of their top-line forwards.

There’s no match in salary. And the Bruins would be moving a pace-pushing, two-way defenseman who projects to develop into Chara’s replacement. Translation: It ain’t happening.

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added 8:30am, Michael Russo of the Star Tribune on the Oilers...

Got to chatting with an NHL scout about the joke that is the Edmonton Oilers and he said, only half-kiddingly, that there should be a league-implemented rule that limits the amount of top-five picks a team can get in a certain amount of years.

In other words, at some point, you should get punished — not rewarded — for gross incompetence.

Nothing ever changes in Edmonton. Here we go again with another fired coach, Dallas Eakins, who talked a good game but seemed in over his head with the Oilers well on their way to a fifth top-three pick in the past six years, and maybe even fourth first overall pick in six years.

Doesn’t seem fair that a team that was able to draft Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Nail Yakupov first overall and Leon Draisaitl third overall (regardless of what you think of them) is well on its way to being so bad yet again that it’s going to luck right into potential franchise-changers Connor McDavid or Jack Eichel.

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About Kukla's Korner Hockey

Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

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