Anaheim Ducks Trade Options: T.J. Oshie

Perennial under-achievers in St. Louis looking to clear some room on the roster – should Anaheim go fishing?

With so many of our readers here at Pucks of a Feather in favor of seeing the Anaheim Ducks trade their first pick in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft, I want to spend the hours before the draft begins tossing a few scenarios out there.

Let’s start with the team that seems destined to shake things up following yet another disappointing offseason, the St. Louis Blues.  There are a lot of names being tossed around when it comes to the Blues and the organization’s attempt to shake things up, but the name you hear the most is T.J. Oshie:

Oshie epitomizes what is wrong with the Blues: great regular season success, but a no-show come playoffs time.  After a regular season effort that produced 19-36-55 and +17 rating over 72 games, Oshie went 1-12 for a -3 rating in the playoffs.  Individual efforts such as those contributed to why St. Louis, a team that went 51-24-7 and tied the Anaheim Ducks with a Western Conference-high 109 points, lost in the first round to the Minnesota Wild in six games.

There’s no doubt that many teams are interested in Oshie’s talents, and it appears that St. Louis GM Doug Armstrong is listening to interested parties.  As TSN’s Darren Dreger put it, Oshie is worth considering for the following reasons:

"He hasn’t been in the game long enough where he’s got warts or any sort of obvious flaws. Is he as high-end a player as what the Blues or some were hoping? Maybe not, but he’s still young enough that there’s hope and promise. On a lot of teams he can easily fit in their top-6. On a deeper team, man, he’d be a great top-9 forward."

Whether Anaheim considers him a top 6 forward will go along way toward determining whether GM Bob Murray reaches out to Armstrong.  The problem with trying to assess Blues players is that they play in Ken Hitchcock’s system, and it’s often tough to tell whether a certain will thrive or falter once they are removed from that system.  Since Hitchcock’s system is based on a strong forecheck, however, one would hope the Ducks would be able to put Oshie to good use.

With the Anaheim Ducks disappointed with Matt Beleskey‘s rejection of their latest (and quite obviously, last) contract offer,  it is obvious the team is going to have to either trade his negotiating rights before July 1, seek to replace him via free agency, or assemble a trade package using a combination of picks and players in order to bring someone in.  Is Oshie worth the effort?  We’ll found out soon enough.