This 2019 Almost-Trade Would Have Shaken the Hockey Landscape Dramatically
Yesterday on his own program, Jeff Marek of Sportsnet shared a crazy story that would have blown up the landscape of the NHL. According to Marek, the Tampa Bay Lightning were actively shopping forward Nikita Kucherov at the 2019 Entry Draft in Vancouver (this has been widely reported). Recently, he learned what the return would have been, had the trade been executed: Leon Draisaitl.
That is right, two of the NHL's top offensive players could have swapped places the year before Tampa won their first of two championships, meaning that the Bolts could have been without their top offensive winger, but they could have had Leon Draisaitl.
If the two of these forwards would have swapped places, who knows how the last three seasons would have shaken out? The Lightning won two Stanley Cups in that span, Edmonton...has not.
The craziest piece of this puzzle is that, at the time Tampa was shopping Kucherov, he had just won the Art Ross and Hart Trophies as well as the Ted Lindsay Award. If they would have flipped him for Draisaitl in 2019, would the Bolts have won their two Cups? Would Edmonton be nearly as dominant of a team without their 1-2 punch up the middle? These are questions to which we will never have an answer, but are still fun to debate anyway.
| POLL | ||
SEPTEMBRE 14 | 190 ANSWERS This 2019 Almost-Trade Would Have Shaken the Hockey Landscape Dramatically Who would have won this trade, had it happened? | ||
| Edmonton | 86 | 45.3 % |
| Tampa Bay | 104 | 54.7 % |
| LIST OF POLLS | ||
| G | A | PTS | ||
| Kyle Connor | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Alex Tuch | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Owen Power | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Michael Bunting | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Drew Helleson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jirí Kulich | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Isac Lundestrom | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Vladislav Namestnikov | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Nino Niederreiter | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Gabriel Vilardi | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jason Zucker | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Leo Carlsson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Nikolaj Ehlers | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Ross Johnston | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Evgeni Malkin | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Josh Morrissey | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Cole Perfetti | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Bryan Rust | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Mark Scheifele | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Trevor Zegras | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Complete stats | ||||
| STANDINGS 2024-2025 | ||||||
TOP 10 | GP | W | L | OL | PTS | |
Jets | 20 | 17 | 3 | - | 34 | |
Wild | 19 | 13 | 3 | 3 | 29 | |
Hurricanes | 19 | 14 | 5 | - | 28 | |
Devils | 22 | 13 | 7 | 2 | 28 | |
Capitals | 19 | 13 | 5 | 1 | 27 | |
Golden Knights | 20 | 12 | 6 | 2 | 26 | |
Maple Leafs | 20 | 12 | 6 | 2 | 26 | |
Rangers | 18 | 12 | 5 | 1 | 25 | |
Panthers | 20 | 12 | 7 | 1 | 25 | |
Flames | 20 | 11 | 6 | 3 | 25 | |
| Conference | Cumulative | ||||||