JORDAN EBERLE: CASUALTY OF CIRCUMSTANCE

Thursday morning Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli finally pulled the trigger on the long speculated Jordan Eberle trade and to the shock of absolutely no one, Oilers fans went bonkers. During and after the playoff run message boards and social media were running rampant with vitriol for Eberle. They couldn't run him out of town fast enough, myself included. However where I differ from the rest is I didn't backtrack once the trade was consummated.

After the Oilers were eliminated in Game 7 of the 2nd round by the Anaheim Ducks, I decided that I was finally done with Jordan Eberle as an Edmonton Oiler. His playoff performance, or lack thereof, was the final nail in the coffin for me. How can a $6M player not score a single goal in his 1st playoff appearance? The reason he is a $6M man is because he is paid to put the puck into the net. If he doesn't do that then what good is he? The answer is not very good at all. There are other aspects of the game that a player can do when they aren't scoring to be productive. These aspects include: defensive responsibility, creating offence, physical presence and drawing penalties. Jordan Eberle did none of these things.

The most frustrating part of all this is that once he was demoted to the 3rd line, with Benoit Pouliot & Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, is that they were matched up against the bottom 6 forwards of the Ducks and they could not produce ANYTHING. Pouliot & Nugent-Hopkins aren't getting let off the hook because they needed to produce as well, however they did bring other dimensions to their game that were positive. Unfortunately during the biggest games in Eberle's Oilers career, he shrunk away when the games became tighter and the play became rougher.

I was willing to expose Eberle in the Expansion Draft and lose him for nothing just to get that $12M remaining on his contract off of the books. I was called crazy, among other things, from my friends and respected media members such as Jason Gregor and LoweTide. My reasoning was that it was more beneficial to lose his entire contract than have to take back a bad contract in a trade. The reality was that Eberle's value was at an all-time low and the fact that Chiarelli managed to trade him, without retaining any salary and only taking back Ryan Strome and his $2.5M contract before becoming an RFA next July, is no small feat.

Once the trade was reported, public opinion was "That's it?", "Chiarelli got fleeced by Snow again?", and "What a terrible trade!". To put it frankly, those people are misguided. Come the start of the 2018/2019 season, Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl are probably going to combine for $20M of the cap. There was zero room for Eberle. By Chiarelli acting now and not waiting until next summer when every GM would've seen him coming a mile away and would've bent him over a barrel so to speak is the smart play. To help swing the opinions of those still on the fence, not only is McDavid's contract up next July but so are the contracts of Maroon, Caggiula, Slepyshev, Strome, Letestu, Benning, Nurse & Brossoit. Of course by then, Fayne will be off the books too, but that is still a lot of contracts to get done and only so much of the salary cap to go around.

Eberle for Strome reminds me of the Oilers trades during the 1990's. The Oilers trade a skilled forward they can no longer afford for a bigger, younger, cheaper, lesser forward. Case in point: Jari Kurri for Scott Mellanby, Glenn Anderson for Vincent Damphousse, Vincent Damphousse for Shayne Corson, Shayne Corson for Mike Grier, Mark Messier for Bernie Nicholls, Bernie Nicholls for Zdeno Ciger, Bill Guerin for Anson Carter, Anson Carter for Mike York and so on. The difference here is that now the Oilers are doing it to conserve cap space for their superstars not because they can't afford their contracts.

I readily admit that Jordan Eberle is the better player right now and most likely when all is said and done, however this trade makes the Edmonton Oilers cap situation much better than it was before this trade. I will always remember his 1st NHL goal in his 1st NHL game when he scored that beautiful shorthanded off a rush to the net. I sincerely wish him the best of luck in New York, it's not personal, it's just business.