January 16, 2023 by Ryan Lotsberg

Last week, I posted this Tweet in regards to the current situation for the Edmonton Oilers:

Fans in Edmonton are panicking, but Ken Holland isn't panicking. Panic is the worst reason to make a trade, and being in panic mode is the worst position to be in while making a trade. That's how bad trades happen!

— Lotsy (@lotsryan) January 11, 2023

The Tweet prompted comments from a lot of people with a range of opinions between praising me for being reasonable and disagreeing with me because the Oilers need to win now.

I decided to do a deep dive into the archives and revisit some old Oilers trades that I considered to be “panic trades”. I’ll qualify a “panic trade” as a trade made with the intention of improving the team’s fortunes at a time where things were not going well and there was a lot of pressure to succeed due to high expectations.

Kevin Lowe was in a difficult position after the 2006 playoffs. Chris Pronger was one of eleven players from that team that would not return for the next season. Pronger was traded to Anaheim in exchange for Joffrey Lupul, Ladislav Smid, a 2007 1st round pick (Nick Ross), a 2008 1st round pick (Jordan Eberle), a 2008 2nd round pick (Travis Hamonic) on July 3, 2006. 

That wasn’t a “panic trade” because Pronger wanted to leave amid controversy in Edmonton. The panic began after the 2006-07 season in which the Oilers finished as the league’s lowest scoring team. That wasn’t good enough for a team that had been to game seven of the Cup Finals the year before. That prompted this move from Lowe:

July 1, 2007: Lupul (28 points in 81 games with Edmonton in 2006-07) and Jason Smith to Philadelphia for Geoff Sanderson (28 points in 56 games with Philadelphia in 2006-07), Joni Pitkanen (43 points in 77 games with Philadelphia in 2006-07), and a 2009 3rd round pick (Cam Abney)

The team fared better in 2007-08. They got 88 points and finished fourth in the division. However, they still missed the playoffs. Lowe made three trades over a three day span in the summer of 2008: 

June 29, 2008: Matt Greene and Jarrett Stoll to Los Angeles for Lubomir Visnovsky. 

July 1, 2008: Pitkanen (26 points in 63 games with Edmonton in 2007-08) to Carolina for Erik Cole (51 points in 73 games with Carolina in 2007-08); Raffi Torres to Columbus for Gilbert Brule.

Greene and Stoll went on to win three Stanley Cups each with the Kings, and Visnovsky played 107 games over two miserable seasons for the Oilers. Pitkanen only played one season in Edmonton, and you’ll see how Cole’s Oilers story ended momentarily. Brule was the only player acquired by Lowe in a “panic trade” that lasted more than two seasons. Brule played 11 games in his first season with the Oilers, which was clearly a development year for him.

Those would be Lowe’s last moves as General Manager of the Oilers. He was fired and replaced with Steve Tambellini on July 31, 2008. Lowe lasted just two seasons after the 2006 Cup run. A big part of the reason for that was because of the players he lost after that run; but he spent those two years making “panic trades” trying to keep the dwindled roster competitive for a hungry Oilers fanbase that had foolishly high expectations for the team after 2006. 

The Oilers finished with 85 points in 2008-09. Tambellini tried to get the Oilers into the playoffs, but they fell six points short. Here are the trade deadline deals that Tambellini made that season in an effort to get that mediocre team over the playoff cut line:

March 4, 2009: Cole (27 points in 63 games with Edmonton) to Carolina for Patrick O’Sullivan (37 points in 62 games with Carolina) and a 2009 second round pick (Jesse Blacker); 2009 second round pick (Jesse Blacker) to Buffalo for Ales Kotalik (32 points in 56 games with Buffalo).

Cole went on to have a few more good years elsewhere while O’Sullivan failed to live up to his potential in his 92 games as an Oiler. Ales Kotalik was a rental that got 11 points in 19 games down the stretch. Those “panic trades” gained the Oilers absolutely zilch.

Related: The Legitimacy of Trading for Jakob Chychrun

Their 62-point 2009-10 season was dreadful. Visnovsky (32 points in 57 games) was traded for Ryan Whitney (28 points in 62 games) and a pick at the trade deadline. Steve Staios and Denis Grebeshkov were also moved before that deadline. O’Sullivan was traded for Jim Vandermeer that summer, and the Oilers drafted Taylor Hall with the first overall pick in the 2010 draft. Tambellini’s focus shifted from trying to make the old core win to rebuilding around Hall.

The next trade that I would consider to be a “panic trade” happened at the 2012 trade deadline during a season in which the team finished 23rd in goals against:

February 27, 2012: Tom Gilbert (17 points in 47 games with Edmonton) to Minnesota for Nick Schultz (3 points in 62 games with Minnesota).

That was a case of the Oilers trading a good all around defenceman for a shutdown defenceman. Schultz played in 20 games to finish the 2011-12 season, 48 games in the 2012-13 season, and 60 games in the 2013-14 season. The Oilers finished 19th in goals against in the 2012-13 (a slight improvement); but they finsihed 30th in the 2013-14 season, Schultz’s second full season with the team. Schultz clearly wasn’t the answer to what ailed the Oilers defence.

Tambellini was fired in April of 2013 and replaced by Craig MacTavish. The expectations were higher for MacTavish because he had a core of three first overall picks (Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and Nail Yakupov) plus Eberle to build around.

The Oilers got 67 points in MacTavish’s first year in charge, and they were last in the league in goals against. MacTavish tried to address the goals against situation by changing his goalies midseason:

January 15, 2014: Devan Dubnyk for Matt Hendricks; 2014 third round pick (Dominic Turgeon) for Ben Scrivens. 

That didn’t help, so he tried another goalie swap at the trade deadline:

March 4, 2014: Ilya Bryzgalov to Minnesota for a 2014 fourth round pick (William Lagesson); 2014 fifth round pick (Dennis Yan) and 2015 fourth round pick (Matthew Berkovitz) for Viktor Fasth. 

History shows that Scrivens and Fasth were a terrible tandem. Totally changing the goalie tandem midseason out of panic because team was last in the league in goals against wasn’t a good move either.

That summer, MacTavish traded beloved Oilers legend Sam Gagner for Teddy Purcell, who is four years Gagner’s senior. Purcell would get 34 points in 82 games in 2014-15, and 32 points in 61 games in 2015-16 for the Oilers. He got traded at the deadline in 2016, and was out of the league after playing 12 games in 2016-17. Gagner had seasons of 41 and 50 points after his trade out of Edmonton, and he’s still playing today! That was a “panic trade” of a younger player with good years left for a veteran that was about to decline hard. Gagner’s points per game rate was higher than Purcell’s when the trade happened, so the Oilers didn’t stand to gain much from that trade, and they didn’t.

The most painful “panic trade” that MacTavish made was when he traded Jeff Petry to Montreal for a 2015 fourth round pick (Caleb Jones) and a 2015 second round pick (Jonas Siegenthaler). Petry was a 27-year old impending unrestricted free agent that had just been bridged twice by the Oilers. The team was bad enough that season to warrant trading expiring contracts for picks, but Petry still had some upside and was worth keeping in hindsight.

Click the link to find part two of this piece, the Chiarelli Era.