With Wayne Gretzky gone, the Oilers managed to win the 1990 Stanley Cup with Mark Messier as the captain, but just a few seasons later, members of the dynasty were traded piece by piece.

By the end of the 1992-93 season, no key member of the Oilers dynasty finished the season on the team. In turn, the Oilers finished the season with 60 points, the fifth-fewest in the National Hockey League.

Picking seventh in the 1993 draft, the Oilers selected Jason Arnott, kick-starting a trade tree that lasted two and a half decades with three notable branches. One merged with the Mark Messier trade tree, and another one ended disappointingly.

As for the other branch, that resulted in Aleš Hemský and ended in 2019. We’ll look at this branch in this article, but let’s first begin with some context.

Jason Arnott and Bill Guerin’s careers

Arnott immediately broke into the NHL, scoring 33 goals and 68 points in 1993-94, finishing as the runner-up for the Calder Trophy. The following season, the lockout shortened 1994-95, the right-shot forward scored 15 goals and 37 points in 37 games.

He was productive for the next two seasons as well, but started slow in 1997-98. After scoring just five goals and 18 points in 35 games, the Oilers sent him and Bryan Muir to the New Jersey Devils for Bill Guerin and Valeri Zelepukin.

Arnott went on to have a productive career, winning the Stanley Cup with the Devils in 1999-2000, playing for the Stars, Nashville Predators, New Jersey Devils, Washington Capitals, and St. Louis Blues in the second half of his career. In the end, he finished with 417 goals and 938 points in 1,244 games.

Zelepukin is a non-factor in this trade tree, but Guerin was an important Oilers player in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Following the trade, the forward scored 13 goals and 29 points in 40 games, then added seven goals and eight points in 12 playoff games as the Oilers upset the Avalanche.

In 1998-99, Guerin scored a career-high 30 goals, with 64 points in 80 games, but got into just three playoff games where he had two assists. The following season, his final full season as an Oiler, Guerin scored 24 goals and 46 points in 70 games, along with three goals and five points in five postseason games.

After scoring 12 goals and 22 points in 21 games to begin the 2000-01 season, Guerin was traded alongside the Oilers’ 2001 first to the Boston Bruins for their 2001 first, Anson Carter, and a 2003 second-round pick.

Like Arnott, Guerin went on to have a productive career following his departure, scoring 40 goals in 2000-01, then 41 goals the following season. Over 1,263 games, Guerin scored 429 goals and 856 points, winning two Stanley Cups, one before the trade with the Oilers, and one after, with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

This trade was responsible for three major branches, and we’ll be looking at what happened with the first.

The Aleš Hemský branch

The Oilers selected Aleš Hemský with the 13th overall pick in 2001. Making his debut in 2002-03, Hemský scored six goals and 30 points in 59 games. In his sophomore season, he added 12 goals and 34 points in 71 games, then played in Czechia during the 2004-05 lockout.

His 2005-06 season was the most productive in his career, scoring 19 goals and a career-best 77 games. Hemský was vital in the Oilers’ Cinderella run in 2006, scoring the game-winning goal against the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Detroit Red Wings. By the end of the playoffs, Hemský scored six goals and 17 points in 24 games.

That was his last postseason for a decade. He was still productive, scoring 53 points in 64 games in 2006-07, then reaching the 20-goal plateau in back-to-back seasons, including a career-high 23 goals in 2008-09.

The second half of Hemský’s Oilers tenure saw him on the shelf more often than not, playing just 22 games in 2009-10, 47 games in 2010-11, and 69 games in 2011-12. His final full season with the Oilers was in the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season, scoring nine goals and 20 points in 38 games.

After nine goals and 26 goals in 55 games to begin the 2013-14 season, Hemský was traded to the Ottawa Senators for a fifth-round pick in 2014 and a third-round pick in 2015.

Hemský scored a highlight reel goal in his Senators’ debut, finishing the season with four goals and 17 points in the nation’s capital. Following the 2013-14 season, Hemský signed with the Stars, playing three seasons there. In 2015-16, he played 13 playoff games after scoring 13 goals and 39 points in 75 regular season games.

The Czech played just 15 games in 2016-17, then seven games with the Montréal Canadiens in 2017-18 before retiring.

The 2014 fifth-round pick

That 2014 fifth-round pick was used to select Liam Coughlin, beginning the longest part of this trade tree.

Although Coughlin never played an NHL game, he was traded in July 2015 for Anders Nilsson, who played 26 games with the Oilers in 2015-16. Nilsson was traded in late February 2016 for Niklas Lundstrom and a fifth-round pick in 2016. Like Coughlin, neither Lundstrom nor the player picked in the fifth round of the 2016 draft, Graham McPhee, played in the NHL.

That said, McPhee played with the Oilers organization up until 2022-23, playing 27 games with the American Hockey League’s Bakersfield Condors. He was involved in an AHL trade for Xavier Bernard, who played for the Oilers’ ECHL team in 2023-24. That’s where this minor branch ended, but what about the other pick?

The 2015 third-round pick

The 2015 third-round pick acquired in the Hemský trade was not used by the Oilers. Instead, they sent this pick, the 2015 second (acquired in the Jeff Petry trade) and a 2015 seventh to the New York Islanders in exchange for Cam Talbot.

Serving as the starting goaltender in 2015-16, Talbot posted a .916 save percentage and 2.55 goals-against average in 56 games. The following season saw Talbot appear in 73 games, posting a .919 save percentage and 2.39 goals-against average, helping the Oilers make the postseason for the first time since 2006.

Talbot played 67 games with the Oilers in 2017-18, finishing with a .908 save percentage and 3.02 goals-against average, before he struggled mightily in 2018-19. In 31 games, Talbot had an .893 save percentage and 3.36 goals-against average.

The Oilers sold low, acquiring Anthony Stolarz from the Philadelphia Flyers on Feb. 16, 2019. Stolarz had three good seasons as a 1B option, but played just six games with the Oilers before signing with the Anaheim Ducks for the 2019-20 season, concluding this branch of the Jason Arnott trade tree.

Ryley Delaney is a Nation Network writer for Oilersnation, FlamesNation, and Blue Jays Nation. Follow her on Twitter @Ryley__Delaney.

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