Report: The Oilers nearly traded for Rangers captain Ryan McDonagh.

The Edmonton Oilers could be a very different looking team right now.

Earlier this week Sportsnet's National Hockey League insider Elliotte Friedman revealed that the Oilers, and now former general mamager Peter Chiarelli were very close to a blockbuster trade deal at the 2016 NHL trade deadline. Friedman was unable to identify what exactly what the trade deal was at the time but he did lay out a number of interesting possibilities in his piece.

From Friedman's 31 Thoughts:

A final one on Chiarelli: In the fall of 2016, a few sources indicated he came close to a blockbuster at the 2016 NHL Draft, days before the Taylor Hall–Adam Larsson deal. Asked about it, he laughed but said he wouldn’t tell. Believe me, I tried. The Oilers had the fourth selection, snaring Jesse Puljujarvi after Columbus grabbed Pierre-Luc Dubois. There was a potential three-way that would have moved the Flames to third, the Blue Jackets down a spot and the Oilers to sixth. That obviously never happened.

In Monday’s 31 Thoughts: The Podcast interview, Arizona GM John Chayka admitted the Coyotes were working on something with the Oilers to make sure they got Clayton Keller. (They succeeded, staying in the seventh spot.) There are two teams suspected to have taken big swings as well: the Rangers and St. Louis. New York did not have a pick until 81st, but, as Jeff Marek has said several times, loved Keller. The Blues were picking 26th. Someday, it will all shake loose.

Now as you can tell there are a lot of potential scenarios which could have resulted in the blockbuster deal that Friedman was referring to. The good news for us however is that Friedman is not the only insider in the business, in spite of being one of the very best, and after catching wind of his report another NHL insider did some digging of his own.

In a recent bombshell article New York Rangers insider Larry Brooks revealed that the blockbuster deal that the Oilers tried to make at the draft would have been with the Rangers. Not only that but it would have been a deal that could have drastically changed the fate of the Oilers franchise. According to Brooks the Oilers would have acquire Rangers captain Ryan McDonagh in exchange for the pick that would eventually become Jesse Puljujarvi.

From Brooks' report:

The blockbuster, Slap Shots has confirmed with multiple sources, would have been with the Rangers and it would have sent Ryan McDonagh to the Oilers in exchange for the fourth-overall selection in the draft the Blueshirts intended to use on Clayton Keller of the USNDT.

There would have been additional components to the trade, but that would have formed the foundation of it. The Rangers — coming off their white-flag, five-game, first-round surrender to the Penguins — not only understood the time was at hand for a makeover, but recognized McDonagh represented their most marketable commodity.

Not only would the Oilers have acquired McDonagh for a pick that became a player who can't even crack their roster, but they likely never would have pulled the trigger on the ill fated trade that sent forward Taylor Hall to the New Jersey Devils for defenseman Adam Larsson. Could you imagine how different things would be in Edmonton if you removed Puljujarvi and Larsson and instead replaced them with Hall and McDonagh?