Leaked: Two awful Chiarelli deals that fell through

If you think his trades were bad… just check out the deals that didn’t get approved!

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 5 years ago
Leaked: Two awful Chiarelli deals that fell through
Zuma Press

In the 48 hours since the Edmonton Oilers officially parted ways with general manager Peter Chiarelli, Oilers social media has turned into a toxic environment. Fans and detractors have been ripping Chiarelli for his lacklustre trade and free agent signing history as GM of the Oilers, with obvious examples.  Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson, Jordan Eberle for Ryan Strome, Milan Lucic at $6 million for seven years… it goes on and on. 

More interestingly though is the deals that Chiarelli did NOT make… how so? Well… the team would actually have been better served by the deals Chiarelli DIDN’T make.

Check out this first one, reported by TSN’s Frank Seravalli:



Wow… so Chiarelli could have had Backlund AND Sergachev on the Oilers roster over Puljjarvi? Well… that certainly would have helped.

On the other end of the spectrum however, check out this quote from The Athletic’s Jason Botchford, who reports that Chiarelli was willing to trade two top picks for Erik Gudbranson, then of the Florida Panthers and now of the Vancouver Canucks.
 


Moments before trading picks No. 16 and 33 for Griffin Reinhart, Chiarelli was about to trade those same two picks for Erik Gudbranson.


That 16th pick, of course, went on the be 2018 rookie of the year Mathew Barzal. Ouch. Gudbranson is far from equal value but at least he’s an NHL calibre defensemen… the same can’t exactly be said about Griffin Reinhart who is currently playing the the Vegas Golden Knights’ farm system.