Thursday night’s trade between the Calgary Flames and the Philadelphia Flyers was a long time coming.
For the past five months, the two teams hammered away at the framework of a deal that culminated in Andrei Kuzmenko, Jakob Pelletier, and a pair of draft picks heading to the City of Brotherly Love in exchange for Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee.
It’s a rare two-for-two trade that sees one team come out ahead of the other, and a tidy piece of work for Craig Conroy’s Flames. His team adds a pair of players in need of a change of scenery and just entering the primes of their career for a winger in Kuzmenko who, too, needed a change and a middling prospect.
With Calgary sitting in the second Wild Card spot in the Western Conference, having a season many didn’t expect, the trade will help them stay the course.
But it also takes away two potential trade targets for the Edmonton Oilers.
Farabee and Frost both found themselves on Daily Faceoff’s most recent trade targets list, and both were players who could’ve fit what the Oilers are looking for in the trade market. In Farabee, the biggest impasse to acquiring the 24-year-old winger would’ve been his contract as with three-years left at $5-million per year, the team would’ve had to wriggle around their tight cap to make it happen.
And while it may have impacted their ability to do other work, he’s a middle-six scoring-winger coming off a 22-goal, 50-point campaign. His underlying numbers are modest, at best, but he’s got a proven track record of contributing offence in depth roles: something the Oilers could use more of.
Frost would’ve been another interesting target, and one that may have been more viable as a pending restricted free agent carrying a $2.1-million cap hit. Similar to Farabee, Frost was in need of a change of scenery but plays a different, strong defensive brand of hockey. He’s made a name for himself already at 25-years-old with his defensive play, but he’s found ways to chip in offence, too, racking up back-to-back 40-point seasons.
The Oilers are currently test-running Noah Philp as their fourth-line centre to see if he’s ready for NHL minutes. But the team still finds themselves going to Mattias Janmark, as they have in Friday’s practice. Frost would’ve been able to fill that role with ease, and have the chance to grow with the team, too, given his age and contract status.
All of it for naught, though, as Edmonton won’t be able to get their hands on either player. There’s other players on Daily Faceoff’s aforementioned list that could fill similar roles, though: Yanni Gourde, Kyle Palmieri, Jack Quinn, Ryan Donato, Trent Frederic, and Jake Evans.
