Proposal: New Jersey - Edmonton (Yakupov)

[McNuge]

They won't have a choice. He has made it very clear he asked for a trade and does not want to be an Oiler. I could actually see Yak bolting to the KHL if the Oilers don't trade him.

Just like Hamonic and Drouin in the past year. Neither one of those guys are leaving their respective team. There is not point of trading him for a draft pick. it would leave us with 1 legit RW in Eberle and a rookie in Puljujarvi. The chances of a 2nd or 3rd round pick turning into anything special are minimal. May as well keep the kid to see what this change in team can do for him.

Although I do think he only has roughly 2-3 months to prove himself. This is his absolute last chance, because if he doesn't produce with one of our C it will be addition by subtraction.

 

[tmg]

So Bennett/DSP either play first line or aren't even in the top 9?? I could see yakupov doing okay in NJ just curious where he would fit

That seems to be the consensus right now even before adding another RW. The prevailing logic is that Palmieri alongside Zajac is the inevitable 2nd line RW+C pairing, so whichever of DSP or Bennett doesn't win the starting slot on the top (Henrique/Hall) line is pushed to the bottom 6. And if there was one more top-9 RW added (particularly one believed to be a scoring talent but can't play with Hall), that would push the 'loser' of Bennett/DSP to the bottom 3.

It's all OK, Bennett's inevitable injury makes DSP a fulltimer on the top line anyway. This is all theoretical until Bennett takes a bodycheck.

See: http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=2111299 . As many lineups have DSP on line 1 as on line 4.