Talk about a what-if.
Hockey insider Jeff Marek dropped a bombshell on today’s episode of his show The Sheet. According to sources, in the summer of 2019, the Edmonton Oilers and Tampa Bay Lightning were in talks about a possible Leon Draisaitl-for-Nikita Kucherov trade.
Most fans would react to that news the same way his co-host Greg Wyshynski did: “Whaaaat? Stop, no way!”
Fair enough. The trade would have been unprecedented. Kucherov was coming off a monster season: 41 goals and 128 points, the first 120-point season since Sidney Crosby in 2006-07. Kucherov obviously won the Hart and Art Ross Trophies, leading the Lightning to one of the greatest regular seasons of all time.
Of course, we all know how that season ended for Tampa Bay: a shocking and embarrassing first-round sweep at the hands of the Columbus Blue Jackets. Kucherov did himself no favours by getting himself suspended for the decisive game four.
Draisaitl was coming off his own breakout season, topping 50 goals and 100 points for the first time on an Oilers team that finished with the league’s seventh-worst record. Draisaitl would of course go on to win the Hart and Art Ross the very next year.
The contracts lined up. Draisaitl, two years younger, was entering the third year of a contract that suddenly looked like one of the biggest bargains in the NHL at $8.5 million per year. Kucherov, meanwhile, was just about to start the first year of an eight-year deal worth $9.5 million annually.
The Oilers pushed a hard bargain, though, as Marek also shared that they wanted 21-year-old Anthony Cirelli in the deal. Cirelli had just finished his first full NHL season and already looked like a potential star in the making as a talented young two-way centre. According to Marek, that’s where the talks broke down, and obviously, the trade was never consummated.
It would’ve been one of the biggest trades in NHL history, and it looks even crazier in hindsight as both Draisaitl and Kucherov have only improved since the summer of 2019.
What kinds of point totals could Kucherov and Connor McDavid have put up together? Would the Lightning win their back-to-back Stanley Cups with Draisaitl in the fold? A trade this seismic could have completely changed the trajectories of these two…