JD1
Registered User
- Sep 12, 2005
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- 9,709
This is a good point. It's rare for those type of trades to work out unless you're Masai Ujiri.
If true that's a lot of chutzpah on Doug Wilson's part considering there was already a good chance Ottawa was going to have to wait an extra year for that pick since Buffalo had first dibs (which obviously ended up happening). Not to mention the conditional first rounder if the Sharks had made the cup final in 2019. How far did San Jose expect to keep kicking the can down the road?
This is what Wilson said
DW: It’s a fair question. Ottawa had a similar scenario themselves, the year prior, with the Matt Duchene trade. They weren’t as interested in making the trade if the pick was protected.
We obviously asked them to protect the pick, but it would’ve come at a cost.
The other thing is, the draft year when we traded for Erik Karlsson was 2019. We had already traded that pick for Evander Kane. So we had to push our first-round pick out to 2020.
They’re trading the best defenseman in the NHL and they’re not even getting a first-round pick in that exact draft year. To try to protect a first-rounder two years out, when you’re trading for Erik Karlsson?
We asked many times to do it.
So we pushed it to 2020, but we couldn’t get it protected. That would’ve cost us another asset.
So it's pretty clear SJ tried to protect that pick, straight from Wilson Jr.