lol wut. edm wouldn't give any one of these four.

Why not?

I think that it is a good trade i would be happy if the Oilers did that.

I will give you the short version. Then one with info.

The short version is, if you looked up defensive liability in the dictionary, you wouldn't see Risto's picture. Because he missed picture day just like he misses every puck.

The longer version is, + - is a weird stat. People think it's dumb because they don't know how it works. How it does work is comparing people on the same team, in the same system with the same win/loss ratio, team goals against, etc.

Risto is a -145 in 500 games
Montour +9 in 75 games (small sample, probably disregard)
Dahlin is a -20 in 150 games on pace for about -65 in 500 games. Dahlin is a better defensemen, nobody is saying Risto is bad because he's not Dahlin. But you don't know how hard it is to be more than twice as bad defensively in a real sample on the same team. (the teams before Dahlin got there are comparable)
McCabe is a -30 in 340 games on pace for a -45. This is the best comparable. Risto lets teams score 3 times as many goals more than the team scores than Jake McCabe, on the same team, in the same system. Risto plays more minutes, which does matter and Risto gets more points, which does matter but in all calculated stats McCabe would be a much better get for any team. He's also making half as much. And there is no way you're trading 4 pieces for Jake McCabe. So now tell me how much you love Risto.

oilers pass, they have no use for risto

Risto is an interesting player. I'm really curious to see how he would perform on a different team. I'm not sure the Oilers are a good fit for him though - especially at that price. It would be great for him to go to a team some softer fan/media critique.

Personally, I only look at +- if it's a major outlier. Like -165 in 500 games.

Basically same. but you still need comparables. Like 4 years in Detroit everyone is gonna be -165. But that's Detroit.

I just feel like +- is so often not the players fault that it doesn't really matter