Edmonton had just finished its first playoff appearance since 2006. The team was riding high and Peter Chiarelli had been named a finalist, hilariously, for the GM of the Year. As is NHL tradition, winning validated every move Chia had made the year before. The geeks will repeat that correlation does not equate to causation until they are blue in the face, but Edmonton made the playoffs because they traded Hall for Larsson and because Kris Russell was blocking shots and sure maybe Talbot and McDavid had something to do with it but get lost, NERDS!
One thing that wasn’t helping in the playoffs, was Jordan Eberle. That much, everyone was certain. Jordan Eberle had one of the worst playoff performances imaginable. Considering he and the team had been waiting for more than half a decade for the chance to get in, his results were exceptionally disappointing.
We need to remember that Jordan Eberle, before becoming an NHL player, had been previously famous as the most clutch goal scorer in Canadian Jr Hockey history. Ok, maybe that’s a bit of hyperbole, but not much. His status in Team Canada’s greatest performers was well established. So for him to finally make the playoffs and score exactly ZERO goals in 13 games was shocking.
Eberle, through 13 games, had 0 goals and just 2 assists while playing just 14:32 per night. He was playing less and scored less than Drake Caggiula. When the playoffs had ended, a rational response would have been for the team to acknowledge the disappointment and refocus the player, who had also come off a relatively disappointing regular season campaign, but who had an entire career’s worth of data to suggest he was a good player.
There had been a lot of frustration about Eberle’s regular season campaign, specifically with his goal scoring. In 2016-2017 Jordan Eberle shot a mere 9.6% over 208 total shots. 208 shots are the highest total he’s ever had in the NHL, but 9.6% is the lowest percentage. He is a career 13.5% shooter today, but before that season he was a 14.1% shooter.
Jordan Eberle for any of his other issues, and there aren’t many, is an elite shooting talent and he’s been one in every season EXCEPT last year. Since joining the league in 2010-2011, Jordan Eberle is 24th in NHL goal scoring with 179 goals and 30th in shooting percentage (min 300 games). He had famously hired a shooting coach, for some reason, and the results were not good for him, but he was still the Oilers’ 3rd leading scorer in 2016-2017.
However, relying on 13 playoff games as a substitute for over 500 NHL regular season games, Peter Chiarelli had clearly re-ordered the Oiler depth chart. Who needs a washed up Jordan Eberle when you have Drake Caggiula and Anton Slepyshev?
It’s under these conditions that Peter Chiarelli went into his 3rd summer as the Oilers General Manager. He was rewarded for trading skill for needs the summer before, had made decisions about his player valuations based on just 13 playoff games, and was being told how great he was. It was a perfect storm that his good friend Garth Snow recognized an opportunity in.
We would be told later that part of the reason for the trade would be because the team needed Cap Space in the event of an offer sheet to RFA Leon Draisaitl. This doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Elliotte Friedman just the other day noted in his podcast that he doesn’t believe any team was particularly close to ever making an OS to Leon Draisaitl.
Friedman, asked how serious offer threat was for Draisaitl: "I think there were teams that considered it. I don't think that the offer sheet ever got close. I know there were people who thought it might come, but I don't think it was ever close." #Oilers (31 Thoughts Podcast)
— Chris Nichols (@NicholsOnHockey) January 18, 2018
Peter Chiarelli called up his buddy Garth Snow, whom he had dealt with previously in the Reinhart trade, to work on his next blockbuster. On June 22nd The Oilers traded Jordan Eberle to the New York Islanders for Ryan Strome. The trade was one for one.
Edmonton traded Jordan Eberle’s $6M Cap Hit for Ryan Strome’s $2.5M Cap Hit. OK. Fine. Spending less money is typically better than spending more money, but NHL teams have an allocated amount of Cap Space they can use every year to build a winning team. The Oilers never needed nor ever used the Cap savings they made on this deal.
All they did was downgrade their RW position for no reason whatsoever. They didn’t sign anyone with that money…except for Kris Russell, who got a ludicrous $4M x 4 year deal the day after the Eberle trade.
Ryan Strome was a former 5th overall pick of the 2011 Draft. He had once in his career scored 50 points in the NHL, less than Eberle in what appeared to be his worst ever full season. Strome was coming off of two seasons at 3rd/4th line production (28 and 30 points).
By all measurable and reasonable expectations, Ryan Strome was a project who might not even be worth the $2.5M he is making. He is a pending RFA this year and qualifying him will require a raise. The Oilers may not even qualify this player.
Strome this season has been vanilla, if vanilla was an even blander flavor. He has had perhaps three or four games out of the 46 that he’s played where he has been noticeable. It’s not that he’s bad. It’s that he does almost nothing well. He’s not a great skater, shooter, passer, nor is he a physical player. He’s just sort of…present.
Through 46 games, Ryan Strome has 7-10-17 and is dead average in every way that matters. He’s on pace for about 13 goals and 30 points, which is pretty much exactly what anyone could have expected from this player based on his history.
Jordan Eberle, on the other hand, has 14-22-36 through 46 games. He’s on pace for 25 goals and 64 points. There’s a chance that Eberle may finish the season with more goals than Strome does points. Again, the problem here is that anyone could have predicted that. Anyone with a little common sense, anyway.
So Edmonton traded away a legitimately elite shooting talent for someone who might have hit waivers and gone unclaimed and they did it for no reason at all. It neither saved them money that they needed to use, upgraded them at RW in any facet of the game, nor was it needed to stave off an offer sheet to Leon Draisaitl (whom they signed for $1.5M above market value anyway).
Peter Chiarelli simply downgraded the club offensively because he could and he was great and everyone was telling him what a good job he did giving away Hall for free the year before. Outside of ego and incompetence there is no viable explanation for this trade.
I pray that Chiarelli has at least blocked Garth Snow's number, but I fear he's going to try to win his money back at Snow's 3 Card Monte table.
Most important move to follow up the team’s 1st playoff appearance in a decade: Total Bust
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