The Edmonton Oilers have been struggling on the ice lately, with many of their issues coming from mistakes that could be corrected by smarter play from the current roster. However, one thing that can't be improved internally is personnel. To upgrade the players on the ice the Oilers will need to make a trade.
Two of the Oilers' issues are depth scoring and defensive play. In order to improve those areas a trade is something the Oilers will need to seriously consider. I have found a deal with the Seattle Kraken that could help improve both the defensive play as well as improving their secondary scoring.
Where is the improvement for the Oilers?
If the Oilers can execute this deal, they will be upgrading both their forward group as well as their back end. Oliver Bjorkstrand is an upgrade on Viktor Arvidsson. Bjorkstrand in his 59 games played this season has scored 15 goals and added 20 assists, while Arvidsson in his 44 games only has 7 goals and 12 assists and those numbers are with him spending a majority of his time on a line with Leon Draisaitl. The Kraken don't have a player as skilled as Draisaitl for Bjorkstrand to play with and he is putting up better numbers than Arvidsson.
While the statistical difference between Ty Emberson and Jamie Oleksiak is not as large of a gap as it is for Arvidsson and Bjorkstrand when you are looking for a shutdown defenseman you do not care as much about points. For defensive zone coverage, Oleksiak is a clear upgrade on Emberson, right now. With being 8 years older, Oleksiak has a lot more experience than Emberson and will likely be granted more defensive zone time than Emberson by Knoblauch and the Oilers coaching staff.
Why would the Kraken make this trade?
At this point in the season, it looks like the Seattle Kraken will not be making the playoffs. They are 11 points behind the second wild card team and would need to jump 4 other teams to get that spot in the playoffs. With them not being in the playoffs they should be looking at getting younger and building up on assets.
With them trading away Bjorkstrand and Oleksiak for Arvidsson and Emberson the team will be getting younger overall. While Arvidsson is older than Bjorkstrand, Emberson is much younger than Oleksiak, Plus, Emberson is an RFA and will be under team control for a while. On top of just swapping the players, I believe the Oilers would need to sweeten the deal with some sort of combination of picks and/or prospects.
The experiment with Arvidsson has not worked out for the Oilers and they need to have a player that can score playing in the top 6 and Bjorkstrand is a player that has proven he can score, right now and in the past. For Oleksiak, he is a veteran defenseman who has played a shutdown role in the past and right now you can see that the Oilers need to keep the puck out of their net just as much as they need to put it in their opponent's net.