Oilers: 5 Reasons Why Trading Milan Lucic Would Be a Mistake
By Pelle
There have been a lot of rumors and innuendo surrounding Edmonton Oilers forward Milan Lucic. I’ll be tackling on those issues head-on.
Edmonton Oilers: I’ve taken my time to ingest all that is the Milan Lucic trade speculation entirely, and I’ve concluded that there are many reasons for the Edmonton Oilers to keep the big power forward and only a few for trading him.
A lot of analytically-leaning Oilers fans like to say that Milan Lucic is going to decline more and more as he gets older due to the style of hockey he plays. They want to use the phrase “fall off a cliff,” and they rarely take into consideration that Lucic has hardly missed more than a few games per year in his entire career while playing that same style of hockey.
That said, the latter half of last season was one of the worst performances I’ve ever seen a player of his magnitude endure. I put some of the blame at the feet of Milan himself, but I also put a lot of it on the Oilers head coach Todd McLellan.
My Analysis
Why? Well, it’s because instead of sending Lucic down to the 3rd line15 games into the slump, he kept him up with McDavid. That sounds like a good plan right? You put Lucic with the best player, and he should get points, but that’s not the only thing that happened. Milan Lucic had to also go up against the other team’s top defensemen, and it wasn’t until he was moved to the 3rd line that he started to look like himself again.
I do not know what happened to the Oilers top left winger at Christmas. There’s speculation that perhaps the whole slump was mental. It was the first Christmas without his father, and that might’ve triggered something is one theory. Another one floating around is that things off the ice aren’t as honky dory as his young family thought it’d be.
But I’m not going to speculate there. It’s not fair to the player, and in fact, it’s none of our business what happens off of the ice and in the players’ personal lives.
Here are five reasons I think the Oilers would regret trading Milan Lucic:
THE BOUNCE BACK
Lucic has a career shooting percentage of 13.7% and last season it was half of that at 6.8%.
In theory, Lucic’s shooting percentage should come back to normal next season just as Jordan Eberle’s did.
It is a lesson to be learned for Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli. He’s made a habit of trading players at their lowest perceived value around the league. Players like Nail Yakupov, Justin Schultz, Jordan Eberle, and some might even say, Taylor Hall.
If Chiarelli decides to go down this route and deal Lucic, there’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll be watching Lucic score 20 goals in another jersey.
WAIT UNTIL NEXT YEAR
If he has a good season and the Oilers still feel they need that cap room, deal the former Vancouver Giant in the 2019 off-season. The value will be better, and he’ll have one less year on his contract.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE OILERS’ WING DEPTH
It’s already been weakened enough after the trades of Hall, Eberle, David Perron, and Pat Maroon. Plus the buyout of Benoit Pouliot didn’t help that either. If the Oilers trade Milan Lucic, is a winger coming back?
If not, they’d better hope that Brady Tkachuk drops to 10.
THE SWEETENER
Frank Seravalli was speaking to the idea that the Oilers would need to include a “sweetener” to move Lucic this year. I say wait and add it next year because there’s no doubt in my mind that the Oilers will be a better team in 2018/19 and with that their first-round pick in the 2019 draft will be lower (hopefully in the 20s again).
Sending a first-round pick with Lucic would be a lot more palatable if the pick was closer to 31 than 1, right?
PULJUJARVI
Another sort of sweetener teams include in these deals are prospects and one who is having a tough time getting traction is Jesse Puljujarvi. If he can’t find a way to produce more than 15 or 20 points next year, HE’S the sweetener you send with Milan in the off-season.
IN CONCLUSION
The only reasons not to keep Milan Lucic on the Oilers are financial ones, but as we seen in the Stanley Cup Final this year, players who aren’t the most gifted skaters or aren’t the most skilled still had significant impacts.
Ryan Reaves is not even close to the player than Milan Lucic nor is Devante Smith-Pelly for the Caps, but they played their roles and were rewarded with longer seasons.
It will be a great learning experience for Lucic, and I’m of the belief that he’ll benefit greatly from it and have a massive bounce back in 2018/19!