not true. We can make it work
Not sure if you're just saying that just because you're named Mr. Positive.
If they'd be willing to take a futures heavy deal from the Oil (and we can negotiate an extension), maybe....
To OTT: Benning (salary/roster purposes), Bouchard (see him as a Kris Letang type D), Yamamoto (played on a line with Tkachuk at WJC), 2019 1st
To EDM: Karlsson
Salary works for this year with Sekera's LTIR (including a Nurse bridge). Both Sekera and Russell have their NMC's turn to limited in the summer, we can trade them both then (likely with sweeteners attached).
With Russel I'm 99% sure we'd be able to get a suitor for Russel if we ate 1M of salary for the remaining 2 years of his contract. I think we could get a 2nd.
With Sekera things would be harder. 2 years in a row having suffered major injuries during the off-season meaning 2 straight years removed from seeing him play hockey at the level you'd expect out of a top 4 d-man. He'd be a hard sell. A really hard sell, I think. He'll be 33.
Call me crazy, but I feel like there's too much risk. We've got really bad depth in our prospect pool and trading our two best prospects isn't going to help things much.
I'd rather stay out of the Karlsson sweepstakes and still go ahead with trading Russell to create needed cap space to fill other needs. If we do what you propose if Karlsson is signed long term with the Oilers we're probably making the playoffs, but things aren't going to get much easier for us for quite a while.
For things to go well for us Lucic is either going to have to return to his Boston form or he's going to have to accept the Oilers stating that he isn't healthy so that we can write off the remaining years of his contract so that we can put his cap space to use. If Sekera doesn't suffer some injury which stops him from playing the 19/20 season, he'll probably look like a top 4 d-man again and he'll be easier to be traded but not likely by a whole lot because he'll either end up playing on the 3rd pairing behind Nurse and Klefbom or he'll get moved to the right side when he's playing better... where he doesn't play nearly as well.
Then again, Klefbom could get hurt with another freak injury which of course would have nothing to do with any previous injuries allowing Sekera to move up to the 2nd pairing.