The NHL Draft kicks off tonight with Round 1 expected to take 48 years to complete, and that had me thinking about whether we’re in for any kind of action despite the Oilers not having a pick until tomorrow morning. With plenty of trade rumours swirling around the team right now, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hope for a little bit of activity, don’t you? Exactly.

Ever since we found out that Darnell Nurse asked for a trade out of town, it’s been pretty hard to get a sense of what that deal might look like or if it’s even going to happen at all. New Oilers assistant coach DJ Smith was on The Jason Gregor Show this past week, and he was very complimentary when Gregor asked him about Darnell Nurse. Smith said, “I think with his length and athleticism, he can be an elite penalty killer in this league. I coached him at the Worlds, and we had a 93 per cent kill and net 100 per cent, and he was the first guy out the door. I like to be aggressive, and he hasn’t really played that system. He’s been been more of a sit at the net and make reads kind of play. It’s not my business if he returns or not. That is his family and Stan’s, but I would certainly welcome him back.” That doesn’t exactly sound like something you’d say if it’s a sure thing that ol’ Darryl is heading out of town. Am I overthinking it? Probably.

But since I’m an overthinker, the wheels really started turning when Frank Seravalli said, “A lot of people have been curious in Edmonton about what happens next. He gave the Oilers three teams to work with. The best that I can understand the Nurse situation right now is nothing on the front burner, and I think Nurse is a tertiary option for those teams.” Option three, eh? Hmm. Not that I think it’s impossible for two other deals to get done for the three teams on Nurse’s trade list, but it does make me wonder if we’re going to have to wait around for a while before this thing gets done. I thought the draft was a logical timeline given the activity we’ve seen all week, but maybe it’s going to be more complicated than that? Maybe there is a weird shot in the dark that he comes back? No way, right? Can’t be.

You know, I’ve long since stopped believing the insiders when they say that the NHL Draft could be one of the most active weekends of the year. There’s always a bunch of hype leading into round one, but it seems like nothing sexy ever seems to happen. Was it two years ago when there wasn’t even a single trade at the draft? Something like that. Doesn’t matter. My point is that this week’s trade chaos actually has me wondering if we’re going to see a few fireworks. Of course, I don’t want to get too excited because we’ve all been fooled before, but if ever there was a time when it looked like we something interesting, I’m thinking this might be it. We’ve had big trades, we’ve had guys like Jason Robertson turn down $15 million/year, we’ve had rumours flying everywhere, so why not have some fun. These GMs might even like it.

Either way, I’ll be live-tweeting the whole first round from the Oilersnation Twitter/X account, and if you want to hang out and talk about the chaos, or even just sit and be bored together, I’ll be around all night. Admittedly, this isn’t my favourite part of the job because the Oilers haven’t been a story at the draft in over a decade, but with the pressure mounting on Stan Bowman to make some magic happen, I wonder if our ol’ friends in blue and orange might be a little more aggressive than normal. And before you get on me in the comments that Edmonton has very few assets to trade, my answer would be that that’s not my problem. We have two years left on the Connor McDavid contract, and these boys in suits make piles of money to figure out problems exactly like this. Tick tock, Stan.

Now that the Babcock presser is behind us and the noise around the decision doesn’t matter, I started wondering if there are any guys on the roster that will actually benefit from having a fresh start and a new coach. The first person that came to mind was Trent Frederic. Now, if we pin the fact that Babcock is as noisy as it gets when it comes to how he deals with players for a minute, I do think it’s fair to wonder if a guy who had a horrible run last year might benefit from a change of voice. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that Frederic had a horrible first season on that monster deal of his, and the result was getting healthy scratched at a time when games meant the most. Needless to say, that’s not ideal.

But now that Freddy has a fresh start with a new coach, could he be a guy who might bounce back somewhere closer to his historical average? I don’t know that I expect him to be the 17-goal guy he was in Boston, but I think it’s fair to say that we’re going to need a whole lot more than the four he popped last season. I mean, he had his best years under Bruce Cassidy, so maybe his personality type needs someone who’s going to push him directly? Maybe? Either way, Frederic is one of the more interesting test cases for what a coaching change can actually do, because the Oilers don’t need him to be a star as much as they need him to stop looking like a problem. If Babcock can get him back to being a hard, annoying, useful bottom to middle-six winger who chips in more than once per quarter, then maybe there’s more value there than we saw in year one.