Better Lait Than Never: Nick Bjugstad trade reaction and Tyson Barrie videos that bummed me out

Why wouldn’t I knock out a 15-minute podcast about the Oilers trading for Nick Bjugstad? Four episodes of Better Lait Than Never in a week? What a time to be alive.

This afternoon, the Edmonton Oilers announced that they had traded a 3rd round pick and Michael Kesselring to the Arizona Coyotes in exchange for Nick Bjugstad with 50% of his salary retained, bringing the gigantic human into town for only $450,000. That number was important because it brings the Oilers to a salary cap position where they don’t even have one extra dollar to spend. According to the folks at CapFriendly, the moves Ken Holland made for Ekholm and Bjugstad left the Oilers with $0 under the cap. For someone that is horrible at math, I find what the cap squad at the OEG offices was able to do to be amazing. Just me?

In other news, I saw a couple of videos of Tyson Barrie on the Nashville Predators’ social media that bummed me out because I know it had to be a jolt to the system for the guy to be traded away from a team where he had so many friends. I know that the NHL is a business and that professional sports are ruthless in general, but you can’t help but feel for a guy that was probably pretty sad to get moved. Anyway, back to the video Nashville posted, it showed Barrie meeting some of his teammates as they were eating or something, and the way it was put together made the whole thing feel awkward. Made me feel bad for Barrie, ya know?