Friedman: If Oilers ever deal Hall, it'd be for "franchise-changing player"

Elliotte Friedman was on Buffalo’s WGR 550 on Wednesday morning.

On if Taylor Hall is actually available from the Edmonton Oilers:

“Well, some of this is annoying reporters like myself to get stuff to talk about I think.

“I think that the Oilers – Look. I know they asked Columbus about Ryan Johansen and Columbus said no. It’s funny. When I was talking about that with some other teams, they were saying there might not be 10 guys in the league that if they were Columbus they would trade Ryan Johansen for. And if they were serious about Ryan Johansen, Edmonton was, then it’s possible they could have been willing to give up Taylor Hall to get him. It’s possible.

“But what I do know is that they’re not giving up Taylor Hall for just anybody, if they ever do that. It’s for a franchise-changing player. Taylor Hall was a guy who was Top 10 in the league in scoring. He’s going through a rough time, but I think he’s a guy who does care and I think a guy who has a lot of talent who’s had a bad year, like a lot of other players on that team.

“If Taylor Hall gets traded, we’re going to look at that trade and say, ‘Ah, I understand.’ But I don’t think they’re going to do it just for the sake of doing it. And I think the more likely course of action for the Oilers, especially in Taylor Hall’s case, is ‘Let’s play it out the rest of the year, let’s see where we end up and where our draft pick is, let’s see who we get with that, and then we’ll use that to make our decisions about the changes we’re going to make.’

“I don’t think you’ll see Edmonton make a trade of one of their core players unless you look at it and you say, ‘I get it.’ Other than that, I think they wait, they see where they get their draft pick, and they make their choices then.”

Source: WGR 550/ Transcript: Nichols on Hockey

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