There are two players in the NHL I'd currently trade Bouchard for. Given that neither Aaron Ekblad or Charlie McAvoy are in this deal, it's a no from me. He's too valuable, given that he's a piece Edmonton's been desperate to have ever since you guys robbed us of Petry. Unless we're getting the NHL-ready version of what Bouchard is projecting to be, I'm not trading him for the moon.

Not a fan of the Puljujarvi trade either. If Edmonton is trading him, I want the quality that Holland is asking for (realm of a 1st round pick or A+, NHL-ready prospect), not a quantity deal.

Lol Aaron eklbad?! Really? Of all players loll....such a weird player to put in your top 2 desired players. Straaaaange!

Yeah. Jets aren’t trading you the 10th pick, so you won’t have it to trade for Bouchard. Logic.

Top-pairing, all situations right-handed defenceman with half a decade of term? Given that Edmonton needs to be winning now? I fail to see how you think that's strange.

Even if he returns to NHL, not one GM would offer that without seeing him on the ice.
Also, what is Puljujarvi's contract going to look like? If he is signing for league minimum, you may get a buyer.

Not saying they should take quantity, but if you can get cheap middle-six winger or 2nd-pairing d-man, I'd run with it.

the value is there. I just dont want to trade Bouch

We waited for so long for a good young defenseman prospect that shoots right, and now that we got one, we aint gonna trade it away

He's been insistent on wating to play in the NHL and signed an NHL-out clause in his one-year deal with Karpat. He only left Edmonton because of how toxic his situation with the Oilers was. Given that the Oilers have shuffled enough people upstairs and shown that they aren't apt to be a basement dweller save for disaster, Puljujarvi and his agent have walked back their initial stance of never playing for Edmonton again.

Probably $1M/2y. If Edmonton trades Puljujarvi, it's likely after a one-year showing in the NHL, hence the term.

Glad you aren't in charge of the Oilers then. I'm fed up with them underselling on every asset they've ever touched. Maximum value or no deal: the Oilers have lost years from making trades for the sake of making trades.

Sometimes you have to lose a trade to make your team better. Good teams know this. Don't get obsessive about winning trades...'max value or no deal'....no good GM thinks that way.

What actual GM thinks they need to lose trades to win wtf hahaha

You think ekblad is top pair defensemen?....that probably explains a lot

Well, let's go through a few basic definitions of what a top-pairing defenceman would look like then, shall we?

-Ekblad ranks 31st among all defencemen that logged over 1000min at 5v5 TOI. There are 62 top-pairing defenders per team (2 on the pair, 31 teams, are you following?). By this metric, he's established himself as a top-pairing defender. Neat

-Ekblad ranks 3rd among all defencemen >1000min in 5v5 points and is 4th in Points/60. Considering ranking among the top-62 is the "loose" definition, Ekblad is substantially one of the premier defenders by point production.

-Ekblad ranks 11th in CF%, 9th in FF%, 12th in SF%, and 13th in GF% among all defenders with >1000min at 5v5. Ekblad is clearly in the upper echelon of defencemen in terms of even-strength shot and scoring rates.

Relative to the league, Ekblad is consistently one of the top defenceman in effectively any even-strength possession metric. The kid is an animal. He's so underrated because he's stuck on a Florida team that sees no coverage. Should he have been a #1 pick in his draft year? Probably not, but picking him outside of the top-5 would have been lunacy.

I don't know what you need to qualify a guy as a top-pairing defender, but Ekblad's the real deal. If he was on a real team, that would be a unanimous statement. The misinformed ambiguity probably stems from you watching exclusively Habs games and eating up the local beat writers' content like it was scripture.

Want to know who else is in the top 60 of ice time 5-5: Ben Chiarot, Ethan Bear, Zaitsev, Dekeyser, Kulikov, Nemeth, Severson....all top pair defensemen right?! Haha get real dude