Holland has other options with Tanev off the market

So defenceman Chris Tanev is on his way to Dallas, not here.

Did Calgary owner Murray Edwards tell his general manager Craig Conroy that no way was he sending a valued player to the rival Edmonton Oilers, in case Tanev was pictured with the Stanley Cup in June?

Conroy has already traded twice this season with another divisional rival in Vancouver (Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov). That said, Calgary and Edmonton have made precious few deals in history — Steve Staios, Ladi Smid and Milan Lucic going south.

Or did Conroy actually get a better offer from Dallas or Edmonton or Toronto?

From the outside looking in, the Flames dealt Tanev to the Stars for a second-round draft pick this June and a B- level Stars prospect, shutdown left-shot defenceman Artem Grushnikov, who is in his first pro year in the AHL. Calgary wasn't getting forwards Logan Stankoven and Mavrik Bourque or defenceman Lian Bischel, their prize AHL prospects, out of Dallas.

Calgary just got an offensive junior defenceman, Hunter Brzustewicz, in the Lindholm deal and also has offensive prospect D Jeremie Poirier in the hopper and needed a pure defender in the pipeline, but you can bet the Oilers also would have given up a second-rounder and probably 20-year-old Max Wanner, who is the same sort of player as Grushnikov, only a right-shot prospect, in his first AHL season in Bakersfield to get Tanev.

Wanner was a seventh-round pick, even though he looks like an absolute steal where the Oilers got him and they are thrilled by his progress, playing every night in Bakersfield. But they would have given him up for Tanev, who could circle back to the Flames on July 1 and sign the two-year offer that was on the table from Calgary.

“Yes, that comparison to Wanner is very apropos, same type of player. The Russian is a good hard defender, good skater, knows his game. Yeah, Wanner is a great comparable,” said draft expert Craig Button.

Where the Oilers go now is up in the air. There are so many balls GM Ken Holland is juggling. If he feels he needs a RW for Leon Draisaitl, then maybe he only adds two people. If not, maybe he has enough for an extra D and two bottom-six, hard-toplay-against forwards.

Holland likes big defencemen. You win with size and reach on the blue-line in the playoffs and Holland isn't the only GM who thinks that. So, while we keep trotting out names like Sean Walker (Philly) and Alex Carrier (Nashville), even Matt Dumba (Arizona), who has gone from an offensive guy to a stay-at-home defender, they aren't big.

Perhaps the Oilers change gears and go heavier for a right-winger to play with Draisaitl (we keep coming back to rental Vlad Tarasenko if Ottawa will eat half his US$5 million cap hit) and maybe they look at trading for Minnesota's Zach Bogosian or Washington's Joel Edmundson.

Bogosian (right shot) makes $850,000 on the cap. Edmundson, playing in the Caps second pair with Nick Jensen, makes $1.75 million, but if Washington ate half, that is doable.

The Oilers are also looking for a right-shot fourth-line centre, bigger than Derek Ryan, who is a first-unit penalty-killer, a dogged worker and good faceoff man but could move to RW. There's Nic Dowd (Washington) and Sam Carrick (Anaheim) but, to these eyes, their best pickup might have been playing for St. Louis on Wednesday in the form of former Cup winner Oskar Sundqvist (66 per cent on draws last season in Minnesota) on an expiring $775,000 contract (21 points).