Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek on 32 Thoughts: The Podcast – Here’s what didn’t happen episode on the Edmonton Oilers, Timo Meier and Zach McEwan.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Marek: “Timo Meier and the Edmonton Oilers. Now the Sharks were pretty frisky come trade deadline time. I reported about Jordan Greenway and their interest there. But you have the big headline story on Saturday. Timo Meier and the Edmonton Oilers.
Friedman: “After the deadline, one of the things you really try to do is call around and say, ‘what didn’t happen,’ or ‘what was discussed and came close.’ Ideas out there that teams tried or thought about and it just didn’t occur.
And one of the ones that dropped on my lap was Edmonton and Timo Meier. One of the things, I think there were teams thinking about, and I’m Toronto was another one of them and I’m sure there were more. There were teams out there saying ‘what if we add Meier for the stretch run and then punted our major decisions until the summer. Figure it all out from there.
I don’t know if that was Edmonton’s plan initially, but I think it became an idea that they tossed around.
I heard the offer they made to San Jose was legit. Obviously, it didn’t win the deal. New Jersey was the one that won the deal but I heard it was legit. Like it was just, would you do this or would you do that? It was an actual offer and there was an exchange between the Sharks and the Oilers. San Jose just didn’t pick them.
And the thing that I thought was most interesting was someone said to me, here’s Edmonton’s gamble. Let’s just say you bring Meier in, you put him with one of the two guys or both of them. Maybe you create some kind of super line. If Meier does anything with those two guys, as you would assume he will, you can trade him at the draft.
That is a situation where you can see Meier’s value be ‘x’ at the deadline and after a playoff with McDavid and Draisaitl, it’s ‘x+y.’ I think that’s the way Edmonton was thinking.”
Marek: “You recoup as much as or maybe even more so than you trade to get him in the first place. That could be the beauty of this deal. You could recoup all of it and maybe more.”
Friedman: “And you give teams permission to talk to him when you make the deal.”
Marek: “I think it’s a good idea. I think it’s a creative deal. I think it’s a very creative way to think.”
Friedman: “Now, we’ll never know cause it didn’t happen but that was one of the ones that I think the Oilers looked at. You mentioned they looked at Zach MacEwan, who’s a guy they kind of flirted with at different times during the year.”
Marek: “It’s interesting. There were a couple people in and around the team that mentioned that name to me and that’s why I put it out on Saturday. That there were, they had these conversations. I know there were some people around the team were interested and wanted it to happen. Ultimately and obviously they decided not to do it and Philly ended up sending him to Los Angeles for Brendan Lemieux and a fifth.
But they did have those conversations, which would lead one to believe that maybe they were looking to get tougher down the stretch. That probably shouldn’t surprise anybody. But yes, they had conversations about Zach MacEwan as well.