What We Learned: How the Oilers failed Nail Yakupov

You have to hand it to Peter Chiarelli: He’s given a lot of other teams a lot of very talented players.

He traded Phil Kessel, the former fifth-overall pick, to a division rival for what amounted to a trio of draft picks. He traded Tyler Seguin, the former second-overall pick, for a handful of lesser players. He traded Taylor Hall, the former first overall pick, for an iffy-if-promising defenseman. And now he’s traded Nail Yakupov, another former first-overall pick, for an ECHL player and a conditional pick.

One can look at these transactions on the surface and say that on the whole, he traded four top-five picks — all while they’re in their early 20s — for two first-round picks, a second-round pick, a potential second-round pick, Loui Eriksson, Joe Morrow, Reilly Smith, Matt Fraser, Adam Larsson and a guy who had nine goals in the ECHL last season. You also say that doesn’t seem particularly shrewd.

But what you have to understand about Peter Chiarelli is that he must think high-level talent grows on trees.

Not to keep dredging up the Behind the B video, but the way the Bruins brass talks about Seguin and Kessel in it is pretty astonishing. Chiarelli and his yes-men want guys who play the game “the right way,” and the oft-misused mega-talents they had on hand in both Kessel and Seguin’s cases didn’t fit that bill. In the case of Taylor Hall, there was at least a clear need to address a roster problem as well as the idea that you have to give to get. We understand that Hall is, even today, a more clearly talented player at the left wing position than Larsson is at his, but the Oilers are so desperate for defensive help that this was the only deal for it they could apparently pull off.

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With Kessel, Seguin, and Hall, this was about a player who was obviously among the most talented and best on Chiarelli’s given club. Chiarelli traded them away for bad reasons and got dismal returns for them. Across the board, it was tough to square his motivations for the trades, all of which — amazingly — arguably revolved around “I have mismanaged this team’s cap space and I would rather have Milan Lucic instead.” That’s pretty amazing if you think about it.

The Yakupov trade, however, is different.

With Yakupov, the return is dismal as well, but the reasons for the trade are a little more self-evident. Here is a former No. 1 overall whose best career points per game was 0.65, and it was in his rookie year. Ever since he’s hovered closer to 30 points per 82 games, which obviously isn’t very good. It’s worth noting he had a stretch of 10 points in nine games when playing with Connor McDavid last season, but if the idea here is, “He can score with McDavid,” the obvious counterargument is, “So can the average Oilers fan.”

High-level draft picks go bust all the time, and if we want to call Yakupov that, he isn’t the first and won’t be the last. That stretch with McDavid accounted for nearly half of all the scoring he did in 60 games last year, so it’s easy to see why Chiarelli would have made this trade so soon after dumping Hall. Of course, that the Oilers immediately went out and spent the cap space they’d just freed up on Kris Russell of all the free agent defensemen in the world is a little weird, given that Russell is bad and needs to have his minutes managed carefully to be remotely effective. But if you’re selling low on Yakupov, you do it with a reasonable expectation that he’s not going to make you look bad in the way that Kessel and Seguin (and probably Hall in the near future) have.

But what’s interesting about Yakupov as a player is that there’s evidence the kid can play even despite how he’s been used. Since 2012-13, his first year in the league, only eight Oilers forwards have gotten at least 1,500 minutes at 5-on-5. Yakupov’s full-strength scoring is in the same area (1.18 primary points per 60) as Ryan Nugent-Hopkins’, pretty much in the middle of the pack for that group.

The problem has been that he doesn’t really produce on the power play despite some significant opportunity. His most common linemate on the power play being Sam Gagner probably hasn’t helped, but he also barely got any time on it at all last season (just 111 minutes). You can say with some amount of conviction that he didn’t earn it, and that’s fair enough, but the point here is kind of that Yakupov has never really been put in a position to succeed in Edmonton.

This is much the same kind of Oilers Disease that infected Justin Schultz and Taylor Hall on their way out of town: Unreasonable expectations put on talented players, who are then blamed for organizational failures. Schultz was never a good defenseman, but that didn’t stop former Edmonton managers from calling him a future Norris winner and so on. When he failed to come close to even meeting that bar, let a lone clearing it, he was shuffled off. However, we’ve seen from his short time in Pittsburgh that Schultz can be effective is used properly, which is something that apparently never occurred to anyone in the Oilers organization.

The same will likely prove true of Taylor Hall in the near future. It’s tough to argue that Hall wasn’t used right because there are only so many ways you can use an elite-level left wing. He was up against nails-tough competition most nights and he generally scored a hell of a lot of goals against it. But Hall seems to have been scapegoated for the Oilers being bad during his tenure, while no one really considered the need his trade addressed (a porous defense) to be something that might not have a lot to do with him. Hall had five head coaches in as many years in the league — Renney, Krueger, Eakins, Nelson, McLellan — to go along with three different GMs. Hard to blame him for the organization’s difficulties. Or at least it should be.

Yakupov is in much the same boat as Hall in terms of having little chance to succeed in the first place. And unlike Hall he’s just not as demonstrably good. There are only so many softer minutes a coach — or in Yakupov’s case, four coaches — can dole out. And over the course of four seasons he got some pretty soft ones.

The point of all this is that selling low on Yakupov was just about all the Oilers could have done short of keeping him. Which they didn’t want to do because they needed defense. Would he have worked out if they gave him McDavid minutes? Probably. But you’d rather have a more proven talent there, like Jordan Eberle, who’s looked great in this preseason.

This does not, however, preclude Yakupov’s success in St. Louis, where expectations will be greatly diminished, and the odds that he finds success in a stronger system are definitely not-bad at the very least. This is a great low-risk gamble for Doug Armstrong. The Oilers are a mess, even now. The Blues very much are not. So if Yakupov puts up 40 points while making $2.5 million against the cap, that’s probably exceeding the dollar value of the deal. And if he doesn’t, you cut bait after a single season and Yakupov’s back making $4 million a year in the KHL, tax-free.

It’s hard to say the player wore out his welcome so much as he was never really welcomed in the first place. It’s not his fault the Oilers have been awful. It’s not his fault they got two centers and no defensemen out of all their first-overall picks in recent years. But given how he’s been used, it’s arguably his fault that he couldn’t put up more points. On some level that’s a team failing as well, because they couldn’t support him with much in the way of demonstrable help. But you gotta put the puck in the net.

This is an unfortunate circumstance for all involved. Chiarelli looks like he bailed early on high-level talent — again — if Yakupov regains his game, which isn’t an impossibility. Especially if Russell doesn’t provide any real help, which is a likelihood.

As much Chiarelli has certainly earned years of getting whaled on for ill-advised trades of mega-talents, this trade isn’t particularly assailable. Yet.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: Well their first pairing in the AHL is gonna do some serious damage, at least.

Arizona Coyotes: The Coyotes might only have one cut left to make. It’s probably down to Lawson Crouse or Jakob Chychrun.

Boston Bruins: Nice little OT winner for Ryan Spooner here.

Buffalo Sabres: Setting expectations a little high here, aren’t we?

Calgary Flames: Ah boy. Ah jeez. Ah man.

Carolina Hurricanes: My boy is all growed up.

Chicago: People are really damn high on Chicago for reasons I cannot understand. They had 103 points last season, which is nothing to sneeze at, but are clearly trending down as their best players age. And it took them an incredibly good season from Patrick Kane and Corey Crawford to finish third in their division. I dunno, man. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them fail to hit 100, to be honest.

Colorado Avalanche: I hope their new attitude is “It’s actually bad to get outshot every night.”

Columbus Blue Jackets: “Trade Jack Johnson,” eh? A novel idea. Just might work.

Dallas Stars: The Stars played in Las Vegas and people seemed to like that someone played hockey in Las Vegas. Hmm. Hmmmmmm.

Detroit Red Wings: Wow, you don’t say!

Edmonton Oilers: You can’t say this kind of thing in a headline while people might be taking a sip of coffee or something.

Florida Panthers: Hmm, this seems bad.

Las Vegas No-Names: The team-building in Vegas will almost certainly be one of my favorite storylines in the NHL this year, especially if that whole “They might be able to make trades before they actually exist” rumor comes true.

Los Angeles Kings: Bob Miller is back. This is good news for all the East Coast writers who never stay up to watch Kings games and have never heard Stu Downty — am I saying that right?

Minnesota Wild: Well to be fair, remember when you could set your watch to Jon Sim leading the league in preseason points?

Montreal Canadiens: Getting to know Bobby Farnham? He’s bad. Introduction over.

Nashville Predators: They’re loving PK Subban in Nashville because he is so nice and kind and good and fun and nice.

New Jersey Devils: How many of these “(guy a team is gonna send back to junior after nine games) might make the team!” stories do we get every preseason? A billion?

New York Islanders: I have a lot more questions about the Islanders this year than just three.

New York Rangers: The Rangers maybe going with four lines that can actually skate would be something else, man.

Ottawa Senators: I am not optimistic this team is going to be close to watchable this year.

Philadelphia Flyers: Boy if the league had just suspended Radko Gudas for a borderline hit on Jimmy Vesey maybe we wouldn’t be in this fix! I don’t know though folks!

Pittsburgh Penguins: Scott Wilson could be a strong depth player for Pittsburgh this year. Of this I am convinced!

San Jose Sharks: The Sharks still don’t have a backup for this season. Seems a bit late in the game here, eh?

St. Louis Blues: I guess we can call this New Yak City.

Tampa Bay Lightning: Breakfast is so good. It’s good to eat it.

Toronto Maple Leafs: Yeah I want a line with Matthews and Nylander all season.

Vancouver Canucks: Man the Canucks are gonna be so awful this year. Why do people think they won’t be? How?

Washington Capitals: Let’s not go overboard here.

Winnipeg Jets: Oh man they might actually jettison Pavelec? Wild stuff.

Play of the Weekend

How does he make this stuff happen? Good lord.

Gold Star Award

This guy TJ Moore, who plays for Holy Cross in the NCAA, has six goals and two assists in two games to start the season. Hey buddy, pass the puck!

Minus of the Weekend

Here’s the Jets’ non-Hellebuyck goaltending in one picture.

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Year

User “LastChancePrice” wants to watch the world burn.

To Montreal: Brad Marchand.
To Boston : Max Pacioretty

Signoff

But what if I were to purchase fast food and disguise it as my own cooking?

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All stats via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)