I didn't read the article. If Oilers protect 4 D, they then only protect 4 forwards. McDavid, Draisaitl, RNH are locks, and then it's likely a choice between Puljujarvi or Yamamoto with the 4th spot. Francis would be crazy not to select whichever one Oilers do not leave exposed. There are a few players he might take ahead of Kassian, honestly. No way Kassian is their selection without Edmonton adding incentives for them to do so.

Great point.

In the real world they haven't yet signed Larsson, so they may instead go with 7-3-1 if the plan is to leave him as a UFA until free agency opens after Seattle has had chance to talk (and sign) with all UFA, but that seems VERY risky.

This decision between risking Larsson, or one of Yama and Puljujarvi didn't exist for the Oilers until the Keith trade.

Just another reason yesterday's trade sucked. Holland better convince Larsson to wait until after the ED to ink the deal, if they have one.

It was also reported by Bob Stauffer (before the Keith trade) that Kassian might actually be one of their protected forwards, if you can believe it. Again, this presumed both RNH and Larsson would re-sign ahead of the ED and Oilers would go with the 7-3-1 format, but I don't know what thinking would possess anyone at this point to not protect other assets. Benson, for example.

I watched Ken Holland's media availability on the Keith trade yesterday. He was surprisingly confrontational in comparison to the usual "GM-speak" of just explaining the how, not the why.

It gave more insight that he's not in fact playing 4d chess and it's probably as bad as it looks on face value. Quoting that instead of analytics and stats, he reads the record books and that's how he decides who to get

There was a point where he asked "what would you want me to do?! I had to either give more assets to get cap retention, or less assets and pay full cap price"

But nobody said to him, "you could have just walked from the deal, did you ever consider that?".

Yeah I saw snippets of his presser and just shook my head. He had all the leverage in the world and blew it. Colossal failure.

And with the news today that Minnesota is buying out Suter and Parise, one can't help but ask (however unlikely): "Wow, wonder if we could have signed both of them for less than what we're paying Keith!"