With money, picks tight, Holland went for defence

Ken Holland had to be careful, so he went conservative.

The Edmonton Oilers general manager didn't have enough bullets in his chamber fiscally to shoot for all of a second-line left-winger with some scoring pop, a third-line centre with some offensive juice and a veteran left-shot defenceman who's bigger than Kris Russell. So Holland just aimed for defence over offence because that's usually the right playoff ingredient.

So, welcome Dmitry Kulikov. Not a sexy move, but a clever and needed one with Kulikov targeted to play April 26 in Winnipeg after his quarantine and practice time.

Were they ever in on bringing back Taylor Hall for the rabid fan base to play on the second line with either Leon Draisaitl or Ryan Nugent-hopkins? That would have been a juicier add here.

“I'm not going to get into that (Hall) ... I'm not sure if I can talk about other team's players, but the answer's no,” said Holland, who wasn't giving up a first-round pick for a rental and didn't have a second-rounder to partner with a prospect as Boston did to get Hall. He's admitted the Andreas Athanasiou move last trade deadline was a swing and a miss and left the team in a draft/trade hole. He wasn't giving up any of his A prospects (Dylan Holloway, Philip Broberg, Evan Bouchard) or his B-plus ones (Ryan Mcleod or Raphael Lavoie) in any deals, either.

Holland said the Oilers didn't try to get creative and bring in a third team (San Jose was the team de jour) to retain money in a deal for an expensive addition as Tampa did with defenceman David Savard and Toronto did with Nick Foligno. Were they close on anything else (St. Louis UFA winger Mike Hoffman or a centre like Philly's Scott Laughton, perhaps)?

The gritty Laughton's resume had Oilers and scads of others looking at the rental picture but he re-signed with the Flyers. Hoffman can score, but he does his best work on the power play and he would be on the bench here cheering a Mcdavid or Draisaitl goal, not on the ice.

“I did talk to some teams about forwards, but not impact forwards. Money was tight, assets were tight,” said Holland, who didn't have the draft picks or the money to make a bigger splash. His window for winning isn't as tight as the bigger NHL boys. His team remains flawed (lots of forward checkers) with two superstars, a No. 1 D in Darnell Nurse and a 39-year-old goalie Mike Smith as the kingpins today. He can add a shooter before next season maybe, with more cap room.

“We're going to have 12 forwards, eight defencemen and three goalies on our main roster. We might have had $2-million left. We need to have money to bring Slater Koekkoek off long-term injury if he's ahead of schedule and can play before the end of the season, and he makes $850,000. Do the math. If we bring a player off the taxi-squad the money is all spent.

“We're 22-9-2 since our 3-6 start to the season and we've played at a high level, but everybody understands the cap. We didn't have much space.

“I made a decision last year to spend futures (draft picks for Athanasiou, Tyler Ennis and Mike Green) to go on a run, but the pandemic hit, we got back and were out in four games (Chicago).”