A large moan was heard across Canada when Bill Daly showed the world that big, stupid Toronto Maple Leafs logo, signifying they’re the winners of the first overall pick. Am I upset they won it? Yes. But we won the lottery of all lotteries with Connor McDavid, and nothing will compare to the feeling of winning him last year, not even Auston Matthews. Unfortunately the hockey gods were sending a message to the Oilers this year by not even giving them the second pick. Instead, the Oilers fell two more spots, landing the fourth overall pick.

I’m sure a lot of people would die to have the fourth overall pick. But to Edmonton, this is a loss. A huge one. We take pride in winning draft lotteries. After all, it is our dynasty. It’s a real bad feeling putting it all on the line, wearing your heart on your sleeve, and coming up short. But no use in whining over it. We, as a franchise need to move forward. We need to make a decision on what to do with it. To simplify things, we only have two options. Keep it, or trade it.

By the looks of this year’s prospect list, anything below the third overall pick will be a crapshoot. This adds a little bit more insult to injury to us when we dropped down two spots. I would have been thrilled if we could have kept our projected second overall spot and drafted one of the Finnish players. Since we have the fourth spot, if we chose to draft somebody, we have a million options. 

Through comparisons of multiple prospect lists, the fourth next best prospect appears to be Pierre Luc-Dubois, a Quebec native who plays in the QMJHL. I don’t know about you, but I think the last thing the Oilers need right now is another 180 pound winger. We already have too many of those; it will just be a lateral move, that will not help us next season. [Alright-alright he’s not 180lbs, he’s big. But still, will he help our team make the playoffs next year? Unlikely].

Alright, so no more drafting first round forwards, got it. How about a first round defenceman? Once again, crapshoot. Several prospect rankings have Jakob Chychrun from the OHL’s Sarnia Sting listed as the top defence prospect. Others say it could be Mikhail Sergachyov or Olli Juolevi. In a draft that’s not considered a deep one, it really could be a guessing game at this point. None of these defencemen have really made a name for themselves in Junior. To boot, they aren’t THAT big in size either. Drafting another defenceman and throwing him in the minors is not what we need to do right now, unless we want another shot at the draft lottery next year. Am I worried about the consequences of giving up players in the expansion draft in the future? Not really. Let’s cross that bridge when an expansion team is actually set in stone. We’ve got to trade that pick. 

Trading the pick makes the most sense out of any option the Oilers have. Obviously having the fourth overall pick isn’t as valuable to trade as a higher pick would be, so we may now have to give up more than we wanted to (*cough cough, Taylor Hall*) , in order to get a solid, top d-man. If we had the first overall pick, and we wanted to trade it, I could see us getting away with trading a Jordan Eberle, or Nail Yakupov, combined with the pick, and d-man for a Oliver Ekman-Larsson, as an example. With the fourth overall pick in our hands now, I could see a lot of teams try to make a push for Taylor Hall.

Obviously the return is based on what’s available at the moment. And the only person that is GUARANTEED looking to be traded, is Travis Hamonic. Reminder that he had requested a trade last year. Everything else out there, is purely speculation. P.K Subban, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Kevin Shattenkirk; I would love to have any of these guys. But for now we will have to trust Peter Chiareli, as it’s 100% in his hands now. 

What do you think we should do with the fourth overall pick?

Somebody tell my mom I hosted my very own podcast episode! Come to hear me host an episode, stay to skip through to the parts where Jeanshorts & Baggedmilk talk. 

We talk about our busted playoff brackets, compete to see who is the best play by play man, and answer all of life’s mysteries in a round of Ask The Idiots!

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