Ban Price trades
Joined: Oct. 2017
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The revisionist history regarding Edmonton and the 2015 draft is phenomenal, and probably wouldn't have resulted in the Oilers going 7/7 on their picks.
From what we've heard from the club - directly or indirectly - the Oilers were very interested in either Chabot or Eriksson-Ek at #16, not Barzal. This was also during a time period where Edmonton's strategy beyond Connor McDavid was to add defencemen at the draft. Brandon Carlo was probably had with the #33 pick, not Aho. You have to remember how much Edmonton's management let it get in their heads that their blueline needed to be addressed at the draft every year until it wasn't a problem: this was the team that was going to take Mikhail Sergachev at #4 in the 2016 draft until Puljujarvi fell. I genuinely don't know who they would have taken at #57 (the pick used to acquire Talbot), but if they had gone for defencemen at #16 and #33, I'd wager that they would have probably taken a goaltender. Daniel Vladar was ranked #2 by central scouting for European goaltenders and ended up going #75 to Boston. His height leads me to believe that if Edmonton hadn't traded any picks, he could have been their guy?
Picks in the third round+ probably don't change all that substantially. Jones and Bear were quality finds late in this draft. Marino likely still gets selected here given that Edmonton went with the shotgun approach to finding defenders in this draft. Svoboda and Pagin were solid bets, and both did eventually see North American ice time, but are likely to not have NHL careers at this point.
Not trading for Talbot pretty much leaves Edmonton's status for 2017-onward in a bit of an enigma. Talbot was instrumental in getting the Oilers into the playoffs that season, so it would be incredibly difficult to say how the team would have fared without him. The Oilers being bad in 2016 was a given, and I figure they end up in a similar situation, and are more aligned with taking a forward at #4 due to Chabot and Carlo now being in the system. Perhaps the team would have a bit more scouting detail on Puljujarvi or would be more apt to take Tkachuk, but it's borderline impossible to tell without being one of the people tasked with making that decision originally.
This day was probably when Chiarelli did the most damage he could have to the Edmonton Oilers.