Oilers missed out on 2 Timo Meier trades at the deadline.
This would have been amazing.
By now just about every hardcore hockey fan in Edmonton is aware of the fact that the Oilers missed out on the possibility of acquiring Sharks forward Timo Meier ahead of the trade deadline. On Saturday night, National Hockey League insider Elliotte Friedman revealed that the Oilers were in the hunt for Meier, but were unable to get the deal done with Meier eventually going over to the Devils.
What you might not have known is that the Oilers actually missed out on two trades involving Meier, not one.
On Monday, Friedman was able to share considerably more details about the report he dropped on Saturday and in those details may have been the most interesting part of the story. First, Friedman described that the Oilers were very close to a deal with Meier, with Oilers general manager Ken Holland reportedly having made a serious offer for his services.
"I heard the offer they made to San Jose was legit," said Friedman on the 32 Thoughts Podcast. "It wasn't just 'would you do this' or 'would you do that' there was an actual exchange between the Sharks and the Oilers, San Jose just didn't pick them."
Where things really get crazy is the plan the Oilers had for Meier if they were successful in their bid to acquire him. According to Friedman, the Oilers had planned to trade Meier away quickly after acquiring him if things had gone their way.
"The thing that I thought was most interesting was someone said to me 'here's Edmonton's gamble,'" began Friedman. "Let's just say you bring Meier in, you put him with [Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl] or both of them, maybe you try and create some kind of super line, and if Meier does anything with those two guys you can trade him at the draft."
"That is a situation where you could see Meier's value being X at the deadline, and after a playoff with McDavid and Draisaitl it's X + Y and I think that's what Edmonton was thinking."
The idea here for the Oilers would have been to get an even bigger return for Meier at the draft, when most NHL teams have more flexibility, than they would have given up for him ahead of the NHL trade deadline. Unfortunately this did not come to pass, so we'll just have to wonder about what could have been.
