The Toronto Maple Leafs made a huge deal with the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday, swapping Matthew Knies for Kirill Marchenko in a trade that had other parts. It begs the question: could the Edmonton Oilers have picked up Knies or Marchenko at the price they were traded for?

Here’s the full trade:

Each team swaps talented young wingers and a few extra pieces. Knies is a defensively responsible 23-year-old power forward, and Marchenko is a six-foot-three, 26-year-old scoring winger with speed to burn.

Now the Oilers only have one high-end winger like Marchenko or Knies, and that’s Zach Hyman. They aren’t trading their top winger, arguably the heart and soul of the team. He’s also better than both of those young players right now. To attempt to make a trade, Edmonton would have to dip into a fairly shallow prospect pool.

Is there a way Edmonton could have bid for Knies or Marchenko? The Oilers would have to put a package together that would look something like Matt Savoie, Kasperi Kapanen, Josh Samanski, and a 2028 first-round pick.

Edmonton would have to give up their top young forward in Savoie, a solid power forward in Kapanen, a budding young defensive centre in Samanski, and a top draft pick. Kapanen would need to be included in any deal for the money to make sense. There are other prospects the Oilers could offer, but they don’t have as much value. Isaac Howard, Viljami Marjala, and Damien Carfagna are all useful trading chips, but at this point, beyond maybe Howard, they don’t move the needle.

Should the Oilers have even considered trading for these elite wingers? Yes, they would have to jump at the chance of getting talented players like that. Even if their prospect pool was decimated, it would still have to be done. It’s win-now, Stanley Cup-or-bust time for the team, though finding a way to make the money work for Knies would’ve been difficult.

No, both teams got a better deal today. That’s the boat teams like Edmonton are in. They don’t have big shiny toys to trade because their rosters are full and their prospect pools are small. Daily Faceoff’s prospect guru Steven Ellis says the Oilers’ pipeline is one of the weakest in the league. The Maple Leafs and Blue Jackets are mid-range teams who just swapped their third- or fourth-best players. Top teams aren’t usually able to pull off trades like this one.

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