New Oilers GM to come in and trade Lucic!

Imagine if the new general manager of the Edmonton Oilers could pull this off: trading Milan Lucic and his toxic contract to make room for proper talent that could help captain Connor McDavid in his quest to become a Cup contender once again. 

Slow clap. 

There is so much pressure placed on the shoulder on that man who is expected to come in to Edmonton prior to the NHL draft and make significant changes to save the Oilers. 

Team insider Jonathan Willis of The Athletic believes the first thing to do will be to move Lucic’s contract and believes a trade would make quite the statement across the league and be of better help of the Oilers. 

Willis makes a fantastic study of Lucic’s real value and helps out the new GM with the complicated math. 

“Lucic’s cap hit over those four years totals $24-million. If a fourth-liner is worth $1.0 million and an end-of-roster player is worth league minimum and Lucic falls in the middle of the spectrum, his actual value over those four years is in the $2.5-million range. If those assumptions are all true, the Oilers could justify taking on any number less than $21.5-million in completely dead money at no return.

Coincidentally, the total cap hit of a Lucic buyout this summer is $21.5-million.

As tempting as it is to summarily end the contract, that would be a mistake. There is too much wiggle room in this analysis to justify such a costly step.”

Lucic could see the plan to trade him as a great way to reignite his career as some moves have been beneficial in the past to veteran players. The forward is aware of all the chatter and will get to sit down with the new GM once the Oilers find him. 

“Right now, obviously, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Lucic said on Sportsnet 650 when asked about the possibility of a trade. “There were big changes and there’s more changes to come. If I’m a part of the plan moving forward, great.

“If I’m not, that’s a discussion I’ll have to have with the GM and with my agents and make a decision with that moving forward.”

Let’s see if that new GM can figure out some way to trade Lucic and set things off on the right foot in Edmonton.