Edmonton Oilers and Montreal Canadiens Cancelled Blockbuster Trade Surfaces: Leon Draisaitl and PK Subban Could Have Changed Teams
Sliding Doors Moment for the League
It's a classic case of what could have been.
Twitter's Big Head Hockey tweeted about an aborted trade from 2016 that could've completely altered the trajectory of the NHL for the foreseeable future. This was prior to the trade that saw Montreal shock the hockey world by sending P.K. Subban to the Nashville Predators for Shea Weber (Big Head Hockey initially reported it erroneously as being for Taylor Hall, who was traded earlier that same day for Adam Larsson).
In this blockbuster deal, the Montreal Canadiens would've traded Subban and the ninth overall pick in the 2016 draft (used to select Mikhail Sergachev) to the Edmonton Oilers for Leon Draisaitl, Darnell Nurse, and the fourth overall pick that year (which the Oilers used to select Jesse Puljujarvi.
Dodged Bullet for the Oilers?
With the benefit of time and hindsight, it's easy to see why this trade didn't go down. Subban retired from the game last offseason, and couldn't maintain his high level of play toward the end of his playing career. Meanwhile, Draisaitl and Nurse would still be among the Habs' core pieces (with Draisaitl as the team's long-awaited superstar first-line centre), and the fourth overall pick wouldn't have necessarily been used on Puljujarvi (Matthew Tkachuk? Clayton Keller? Maybe they still take Sergachev?).
Long story short, Marc Bergevin might have some lingering regret about not getting this deal over the line, as his return would've absolutely bossed Peter Chiarelli's in the long run.
| POLL | ||
AOÛT 27 | 134 ANSWERS Edmonton Oilers and Montreal Canadiens Cancelled Blockbuster Trade Surfaces: Leon Draisaitl and PK Subban Could Have Changed Teams Who would've won the Edmonton-Montreal trade if it went through? | ||
| Oilers | 35 | 26.1 % |
| Habs | 69 | 51.5 % |
| Fair for both sides | 30 | 22.4 % |
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| Kent Johnson | 2 | - | 2 | |
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| Complete stats | ||||
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Wild | 19 | 13 | 3 | 3 | 29 | |
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Devils | 22 | 13 | 7 | 2 | 28 | |
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| Conference | Cumulative | ||||||