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Huge If True: What about these Ryan Nugent-Hopkins trade rumors?
[HUGE IF TRUE is a column breaking down the plausibility of the week's biggest rumor.]
The Rumor
The rumor has been going for a little more than a week at this point, and it seems to really be picking up steam this week as the Oilers continue to lose. Edmonton is sick of getting pushed around, so it's looking to trade someone that will get them a decent return.
That someone? Well, according to TSN's Ryan Rishaug, it's a player like a Jordan Eberle or Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. That is to say, a player with some skill and value that would help them immediately; “Hey, Travis Hamonic is available!!!” and so on. Rishaug further noted that he believes Nugent-Hopkins, a 22-year-old former No. 1 pick with 205 points in 282 career games (a pace for almost 60 points per 82 games), would be the more likely player to be dealt because of the Oilers' apparent and sudden abundance of center depth — Connor McDavid, Nugent-Hopkins, Leon Draisaitl, and Anton Lander down the middle is about as good as you can hope for — and the fact that Nugent-Hopkins would probably fetch more.
This comes while Rishaug acknowledges it's a bit of a “robbing Peter to pay Paul” scenario.
Also worth noting, though, is that this comes at a time when Nugent-Hopkins and the Oilers themselves haven't played too well, and that's a trend that's continued through the week since the rumor started. Seems a little hyper-reactive to instantly move to, “Sell Nugent-Hopkins!” after two weeks of losing. You'd have thought that the first six or seven years of the losing in Edmonton would steel local media against this kind of overthinking and conjecture, but here we are.
A few days later, in swoops Sportsnet's Mark Spector, ever the reasonable prognosticator, to say unequivocally that Peter Chiarelli is absolutely will “pull the trigger” on a trade, for what he calls “Soft Skill.”
“In ‘soft skill,’ I say when they’re not scoring and producing lots of points and chances, there’s nothing left for them to do, right? They don’t accomplish anything else. Eberle is never going to have a night where you go, ‘Well, he didn’t produce much but, boy, he should ground the other team down.’ He’s just not that player. And Nugent-Hopkins is soft skill as well, and I’m going to say to you when Peter Chiarelli finally does pull the trigger and when he looks at his core and says, ‘OK, we can afford to miss this guy, we can afford to lose that guy,’ the guys that go out are going to be soft skill, like a (Teddy) Purcell, like an Eberle, like a Nugent-Hopkins, like a (Nail) Yakupov.”
Bob Stauffer immediately disagreed with the assessment of Nugent-Hopkins, and he was right to do it. But “Soft Skill” has become something of a thing — joking or not, it's a thing — around Edmonton, so here we are.
Who's Going Where?
Nugent-Hopkins is going somewhere. That is the rumor. As I said above, people are obviously connecting the dots on a Travis Hamonic trade, but also saying things like, “Let's also keep in mind the Islanders want a defenseman back!” so they can lump Justin Schultz into the deal too.
More recently (Monday), Rishaug said in a series of tweets that in his opinion, the core might get a shake-up at some point, though he foresees that happening in the offseason. He adopted the “Soft Skill” term as well, implying the Oilers are going to try to look a little more like Chiarelli's Bruins in their successful days, and that he believes the team has four untouchables (McDavid, Taylor Hall, Darnell Nurse, and Draisaitl). He adds Chiarelli is “willing to move” either Eberle or Nugent-Hopkins, though he would aim to do so judiciously, because it's hard to get a read on what Draisaitl actually is right now.
However, Darren Dreger says that Chiarelli is working the phones. Just don't expect anything to happen, related to Nugent-Hopkins or anyone else, within the next little while here.
“Do I see a big deal like that coming down the pike anytime soon? I don’t. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t an appetite to do something. As teams continue to roll along here and the Oilers continue to struggle, if that’s in fact the direction that they’re headed – and it appears so based on the standings basically since Connor McDavid got hurt – there’s going to be a bigger appetite to do something more significant.”
But here too, he's still trying to stoke the fire of the what-if behind such a trade. All things are theoretically possible, but this is just trying to draw lines between things that may or may not be there, and right now it seems as though we should be leaning toward “not.”
So basically, anyone could come to Edmonton, at some point in the semi-distant future, as long as it's Nugent-Hopkins or Eberle — but more likely Nugent-Hopkins — going the other way.
Can't have all this Soft Skill lying around.
The Implications
The big takeaway from this rumor is that both the Edmonton and national media guys stoking it believe Peter Chiarelli learned nothing from the Tyler Seguin debacle that in some ways likely cost him his job.
And hey, look at that, here's Peter Chiarelli saying that injuries, the fact that the club generally knows what it is at this point, and a number of other factors aren't going to lead him to make any rash decisions about trading someone just for the sake of shaking things up.
Indeed, statistics show Nugent-Hopkins plays some of the toughest minutes on the Oilers this season. He's been doing that since his second year in the league, and probably would have started earlier had he not missed 20 games due to injury his rookie season.
I mean, if “soft” is your read on him, well, you probably think the Sedins are soft too. And you're wrong about that too. It's not 1992 any more. Just because they're not throwing body checks every shift doesn't mean they're soft. It isn't easy to separate them from the puck.
Let's put it this way: Of the 10 Edmonton forwards to play at least 1,000 minutes at 5-on-5 over the last three seasons, and looking at score-adjusted numbers, Nugent-Hopkins ranks second in relative percentage of high-quality scoring chances, fourth in relative shots for, and second in relative goals for. His possession numbers are a lackluster sixth, but again, no one plays more difficult competition.
You do not trade players like this.
Even if there is a young player like Draisaitl who seems, through 50-something games, like he could be better at some point, this is foolish. If you're selling on Nugent-Hopkins, you're selling low right now. And you shouldn't sell at all.
If the Oilers keep losing, and losing badly, then maybe you say these “Soft Skill” guys are playing their way out of town. But if you're Chiarelli, how do you not address the team's horrendous depth before you start moving actual star players? It's all just silly.
This Is So Huge, If True: Is It True?
On a B.S. detector scale of 1-5, with one being the most reasonable and 5 being the least:
With all this in mind, it's hard to give this trade rumor anything other than:
Skip to 42 seconds of this video to see Todd McLellan step right the hell up for Nugent-Hopkins.
Here's the money quote for the video-challenged:
“When I look at Nuge, I think he's a real valuable player to our team. When you go the 2011 draft, he's played the second-most games out of anybody. Him and Landeskog are heads and tails above anyone else when it comes to scoring, and it's not his fault that he's 5-foot-10. He can't change that. So he uses what he has night in and night out. He had a tough trip, but the sun came up today for all of us, and we expect that to change over time.
Nuge has also the guy that's been moved around. They had a lineup that was going real strong, we lose Connor, Nuge has to come to the rescue and occupy a spot on a different line. So he's lost his linemates, he's been moved around to a different power play, so am I defending Nuge? Absolutely I am, because I believe in him 100 percent.”
And then he goes on like that. McLellan compares Nugent-Hopkins to Joe Pavelski in terms of career arc and attributes, and in accepting that he, like the rest of the Oilers, had a tough stretch, McLellan notes that if you think his size is the big reason why, you're kind of kidding yourself.
So if Chiarelli is looking to trade him, he's doing so against not only his own experience, but his coach's wishes, and all logic as well.
Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.
(All statistics via War On Ice unless otherwise noted.)
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