Pretty sure the Hawks view Kurashev as more valueable than a 3rd (given the consensus around here of dumping Bailey with a 2nd).

I completely understand this point. The isles just don't have many mid-level assets (3rds,4ths) to offer up. I was thinking of just making it a 25'1st but I didn't want to be bombarded by a gang of angry long islanders

Hawks don't make that trade w/ Edmonton. The 1st is fine. Broberg doesn't have that much value to Hawks due to all the promising LD prospects already in the pipeline. Yamo is a cap dump and Skylar isn't that interesting at almost 24 y.o. Since Murphy is still a Hawk, Hawks don't sign Dumba. Devils probably don't trade Yagor for a 4th. But if they take that package the Hawks accept too. Hawks would not include Kurashev in the Bailey deal. He fills Yamo's spot on the 3rd line. Bailey and the 2nd for F/C or one of the Hawks myriad of 4th liners is the deal.

Edmonton loses that trade. I don't see the advantage for them.

Yams is gonna be dumped no matter what and Brind'Amour is going to leave no matter what as well so getting value for either of them is a win. Murphy is a perfect fit for Edmonton, consitent top-4 cost controlled d-man would not only add stability to the d-core but also take pressure off of Nurse letting him get back into 2021 form. Blackwell is one piece which as an oilers fan I don't love but if he can have half his salary retained by a team like the Wild for a 7th then I like it.

Losing Broberg hurts but he does not fit the window timeline (Window is essentially the rest of Drai's 8.5 million deal) Murphy does and that's worth it.

I guess I'm of the opinion that the window is significantly larger than that. The cap increase will entirely pay for Draisaitl's ~$4M raise in 2 years, and they NEED the young players like Broberg, Holloway and Bourgault in order to prevent being capped out all the time. The Oilers have too many over-30 players already.

I think Drai gets paid more than that. Mackinnon got 13 million, considering the cap may go up 5-8 million over the next two years I wouldn't be shocked if Drai gets 15 million.

I expect both Draisaitl and McDavid to take "discounts" in order to win, like Pastrnak did. I'm betting in the neighborhood of 8 x $12.5M each.

Neither is as egotistical as MacKinnon...

If the oilers don’t win anything soon I bet one of the leaves. I’d doubt either of them would be willing to stay in Edmonton, especially at a discount, just to continuously lose in the second and third round of the playoffs

There simply isn't another team with a $15M cap hole that is closer to winning than Edmonton. If they leave to get paid FMV, they'll be going into another "building" situation, which neither of them wants. So your logic doesn't stand the light of day.

FYI McDavid took a discount to be in Edmonton already, so he's shown the willingness to do so. And Edmonton was a much worse team then.

He took a discount cause he was younger and was betting on Edmontons future. I’m not saying that it’s a guarantee that one of them leaves but I find it hard to think they would both re sign on long term contracts when the team has done nothing their whole time there

The team has done "nothing"? They're probably the 2nd best playoff team right now. They lost in 2022 to Colorado (SC winners) and in 2023 to Vegas (SC winners). Vegas openly admitted that Edmonton was their toughest series by far, and the underlying numbers show Edmonton was the closest to Colorado last year in spite of the sweep.

Getting close doesn’t mean anything. McDavid and drai don’t care about winning a round or two, they care about winning cups

That's idiotic. No team has a guarantee, not even the teams that have won recently. Anyone who wants to win would go to one of the top contenders and hope things work out; Edmonton is a top contender. Going elsewhere doesn't increase their odds and they know it. So the fact that they haven't won a cup does not mean that they'll move on at all.

That’s exactly what it means, no one looks at the teams that got close they look at the teams that won. Edmonton hasn’t won and if that doesn’t change why would they stay. What’s going to change? They just paid big money to a terrible goalie so it’s not like they have tons of cap space to work with and they don’t exactly have the best prospect pool. There’s not many ways to add more than they have and clearly what they’ve done hasn’t worked