Connor McDavid<\/a> in a checking role when his team played the Oilers, comes in as an Oilers add, alongside his Hawks\u2019 buddy Murphy. They got Murphy for a second-round pick in 2028.<\/p>\nBoth trade pickups are far from wow, a long way from home runs. Say, ground rule doubles, but they fill needed holes. Indeed, the Oilers had a loud swing and miss on Mangiapane and less than a year later they had to trade a first-round pick to get his money off their books for Dickinson and Dach, who has potential but hasn\u2019t proven he\u2019s a legit, every day NHLer yet.<\/p>\n
The Oilers are in the win-now with McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, and Bowman acted appropriately, filling holes. But again, they don\u2019t have a first-rounder this June or the next one, which isn\u2019t good. Mind you, they\u2019ve made a history of trading those first-rounders, even if they did pick one, like they did with Reid Schaefer (for Mattias Ekholm) and Sam O\u2019Reilly (for Ike Howard).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s anybody\u2019s guess why Bowman didn\u2019t just make one deal with the Hawks for Murphy and Dickinson, but he went back to the well, with the Hawks retaining 50 per cent on both Murphy and Dickinson, an absolute necessity.<\/p>\n
The red flag with Dickinson is his health; he\u2019s been hurt the past two seasons, 59 games last year and only 47 this season. But, when healthy, he\u2019s got a lot of hockey IQ. He was in a checking role at centre with the Hawks behind Connor Bedard and Frank Nazar, often going against the opponent\u2019s stars, as Chicago coach Jeff Blashill told The Athletic in January. He was also part of the Hawks\u2019 top ranked PK, as was Murphy.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s had more of those matchups on a consistent basis, a hard thing. He has a lot of responsibility on his shoulders. He\u2019s a self-accountable person, who wants to win,\u201d said Blashill, who saw Dickinson with a team best 50.77 Corsi percentage and he also had the most face offs in Chicago with 691, winning 49.5 per cent of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cDickinson: Skating+Smart+Competitive,\u201d said former NHL GM and TSN commentator Craig Button, who should be a soothsayer because he said two weeks ago the Oilers should be getting Murphy and Dickinson from the same team.<\/p>\n
\u201cDickinson fills an important spot because his skating is so much better than (Adam) Henrique\u2019s and it gets him into a better slot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dickinson has pedestrian stats, 13 points this season, but he could take Henrique\u2019s spot on the Oilers third line, moving Henrique to the fourth line. Henrique, who came to the Oilers at the 2024 trade deadline to be third-line centre or a winger in the top nine, is fine with whatever and wherever his role is.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll play anywhere,\u201d said Henrique, whose contract ends this year.<\/p>\n
The key was off-loading all of the failed free-agent signee Mangiapane\u2019s $3.6 million for now and next season. Sadly, this is becoming a bad trend, signing guys from other teams on July 1 who don\u2019t pan out: Jeff Skinner, Victor Arvidsson and now Mangiapane. That absolutely has to change with more than $20 million to spend again this upcoming July.<\/p>\n
For now, they found another area code for Mangiapane, the winger who expressed frustration with his playing time back in December after playing early in the season with the big guns until he was moved to a third line or lower. They tried to move him for weeks, eventually putting him on waivers for cap reasons where he cleared. He went to Bakersfield, played 20 seconds on one shift to qualify as an AHL player, the requirement when clearing waivers, and flew back here Tuesday to await a trade.<\/p>\n
The Hawks are banking on Mangiapane having a bounceback after seven goals and 14 points in 52 Oilers games, but if they change their mind on him over the summer they could buy him out. The key was the draft pick. They have two first-round picks in 2026 and now one in 2027.<\/p>\n
When Bowman was the Hawks\u2019 manager he drafted Dach, 23, who grew up in Fort Saskatchewan. He took the former WHL winger in the second round in 2021. He\u2019s cheap, only $825,000, for a cap-starved team, and his contract is up after the season.<\/p>\n
So this is a look-see for the big winger who has played 78 NHL games with five goals and 16 points, mostly in fourth-line duty with the Hawks.<\/p>\n
With Curtis Lazar and Mattias Janmark out with shoulder problems, the Oilers have a hole on their fourth line now, so Dach will get a look there.<\/p>\n
\u201cDach is a very good skater and he has a power element with an edge to his game. He\u2019s capable of making opponents uncomfortable. Nice add for depth for Oilers,\u201d said Button.<\/p>\n
In terms of fiscal gymnastics, Oilers still had some manoeuvring after the trade, being $300,000 over the ceiling, but they put Lazar and his $775,000 cap hit on LTIR. They went that route rather than send Dach and his $825,000 to Bakersfield or returning centre Josh Samanski to the farm with Dickinson coming in.<\/p>\n
They have $475,000 in cap space with 22 active players.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OK, GM Stan Bowman\u2019s work is done. While it\u2019s far from a sexy trade, the Edmonton Oilers did…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,756,45814,12428,164392,96253,7236,23752,453,96111,9634,100816,163532,13886,25908,194602,23988,47589,157745,139932,5881,28334,153356,3302,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-515879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-chicago-blackhawks","11":"tag-connor-bedard","12":"tag-connor-mcdavid","13":"tag-connor-murphy","14":"tag-curtis-lazar","15":"tag-dallas","16":"tag-edmonton","17":"tag-edmonton-oilers","18":"tag-frank-nazar","19":"tag-jake-walman","20":"tag-jason-dickinson","21":"tag-jeff-skinner","22":"tag-kirby-dach","23":"tag-leon-draisaitl","24":"tag-mangiapane","25":"tag-mattias-ekholm","26":"tag-mattias-janmark","27":"tag-nick-bjugstad","28":"tag-reid-schaefer","29":"tag-san-jose","30":"tag-stan-bowman","31":"tag-the-hawks","32":"tag-toronto","33":"tag-vancouver"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}