The Edmonton Oilers made the right decision in trading Milan Lucic for James Neal. It looks like even before they hit the ice, the Oilers likely won this trade.
That’s right, the immovable contract has been moved. Since James Neal makes 250K less than Milan Lucic, in order to sweeten the deal the Oilers retained 750K of Lucic’s salary and will send Calgary a 2020 3rd round pick if Neal scores 21 goals and Lucic has 10 goals less than Neal. This is interesting in that the Oilers actually LOST 500K of cap space in the trade, but I’ll be honest I’m willing to live with it if it meant that contract got moved.
The master-fullness of what Holland just pulled off here is that the Oilers somehow managed to trade a bottom 6 forward for a top 6 forward with little else in return. Ever since the trade Ken Holland has been universally applauded for the move by Oiler fans – something we haven’t seen from the fanbase in a long time – while counterpart Brad Treliving has been vilified down Highway 2 for the trade by Flames fans. That’s got to be a good sign, right? 🙂
Now before we get too excited here, there’s no guarantee either player will bounce back. After all, Neal has had to play significant minutes in the top 6, presumably against some tough opposition as well since top 6 players will typically play against tough opposition.
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Was last season an aberration or is it the new normal for James Neal? We won’t know for sure until the season starts, but prior to last season, he was a 20 goal scorer for 10 straight seasons. That’s pretty good, and at 31 years old those skills won’t be diminished that bad yet if he rediscovers his scoring touch.
Lucic, meanwhile, had one good season since becoming a $6 million man for us and for the past two seasons has gone in the crapper, as his point totals have dipped to less than half (from 50 to 20) from that first season in 2016-17.
Treliving, meanwhile, thinks his team is too soft and the nuclear deterrent of Lucic will protect Monahan, Gaudreau, et al. Will it be enough to propel them past the 1st round of the playoffs? Maybe. History is not on the side of the Flames, as they have an annual tradition of fizzling out in the playoffs, haven’t been to the finals since 2004 and haven’t won a cup since 1989.
Even the Oilers have them beat at all those dates, and look at how bad they’ve been for a long time now?
Who won the trade?
We’re going to have to give it some time to know for sure, but at this point it looks like the Oilers won the trade for two important reasons: 1) Neal only has one underachieving season behind him while Lucic has two, and as Lucic has played a harder game in his career his body is much more worn down than Neal’s is. Lucic can still hit, but his hands have gone cold and his legs have gone slow. That’s not good in today’s game.
I’m willing to bet the Flames see him as a bottom 6 player right now and won’t expect him to score. It also sets the Oilers up much better for the Seattle expansion draft. As a guy with an NMC, the Oilers would’ve been forced to wince and protect Lucic.
But Neal has no such clause in his contract so even if he is bad they can simply expose him in the draft and/or trade picks to Seattle as an incentive to take him or as a traditional trade. A lot of teams did this with their bad contracts at the Vegas expansion draft. Now that NMC in Lucic’s contract is Calgary’s problem, not ours.
If Neal rebounds as expected, the Oilers will have a bonafide scoring winger to supplement the big 3 that they sorely need and it cost them very little to obtain. I gotta tell ya, though, this trade didn’t come as much of a surprise to me as it did to everyone else, considering that I actually called this one seven months ago.
Now I didn’t see the retained salary or conditional draft pick coming, but I got the names of the warm bodies right. What do you think, Oil on Whyte boys and girls? Comment away below.
Fun fact
Did you know that this is the third trade that been done between the Oilers and Flames? The first one was getting rid of the boat anchor of Steve Staios for a draft pick and journeyman D Aaron Johnson in 2010. Staios was too old and slow at that point to make much of a difference, so the Oilers won that one.
The other trade was Ladislav Smid and goaltending prospect bust Olivier Roy in exchange for Laurent Brossoit and Roman Horak in 2013. Considering how much of an injury-riddled mess Smid was for the Flames after that trade – a black spot on an otherwise great D corps – I’d say the Oilers won that one too.
Will the Oilers make it 3-0 in trades with the Flames and remain undefeated? I hope so.