It’s been well known that the Edmonton Oilers need help on their blue line. They have an amazing assemblage of young talent in their forward corps, and can trade from a position of embarrassing wealth to find that elusive defenseman that will put them into the playoffs for the first time since the Bush administration. Peter Chiarelli’s move to fix that ailing blue line will probably not be the one that does this, though.
After trading Tyler Seguin, the #2 overall pick in the 2010 NHL Entry Draft, when he was GM in Boston, he’s now traded that draft’s #1 overall pick, Taylor Hall, to the New Jersey Devils in a straight swap for 2011 #4 overall pick Adam Larsson.
https://twitter.com/NJDevils/status/748240483529306112
To say this trade is imbalanced in the Devils favor is being incredibly kind to the Oilers and their fans, who have dealt with more terrible hockey than any group of fans possibly ever, and now as their team moves into a beautiful new downtown rink, they’re handed this.
In 381 NHL games, Hall has 132 goals and 196 assists, while Larsson has developed into a solid second pairing defenseman, but not much more than that. The Devils finally acquire a player with some offensive punch and pay pennies on the dollar to acquire such a player.
Here are a few Devils fans celebrating this news:
And here are the reactions from some Oilers fans:
We may have all been witnesses to the most lopsided one-for-one trade in NHL history (EDIT: until 15 minutes later when PK Subban was traded for Shea Weber. This is still really bad though).
