Tanev chose Stars over Oilers at trade deadline: report
The Western Conference Finals between the Edmonton Oilers and Dallas Stars begins tomorrow night and the bulletin board material has already started to leak out.
A new report from Stars analyst Daryl Reaugh suggests that defenceman Chris Tanev spurned a trade to the Oilers in favour of Dallas at this year’s trade deadline. He made this report on the latest edition of Podman Rush, the Stars’ official podcast.
“The reporting when the trade deadline was approaching, he chose Dallas over Edmonton,” Reaugh said of Tanev. “The Oilers wanted him bad, and he chose Dallas, and now the two squads are going to face off, which is fantastic.”
The Oilers were indeed among the teams that made a run acquiring Tanev from their rival Calgary Flames at the deadline. Reports surfaced after the deadline passed that the Oilers were one of the teams that offered the Flames a first-round pick in a potential trade for the hard-nosed defender.
Instead of taking that, Flames GM Craig Conroy took a seemingly lesser package from the Stars that did not include a first-rounder. Tanev was apparently willing to go to Edmonton but if this new report from Reaugh is true, that calls everything into question.
It’s a trade that worked out great for Dallas so far. Tanev has been playing very tough minutes in the playoffs this season and was instrumental in shutting down Nathan MacKinnon in their second-round series against the Colorado Avalanche. It’s expected that he will get a similar matchup against Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl in the upcoming series.
“He was worth everything they gave up to get him,” Reaugh continued. “He’s making money every shift, he’s becoming more expensive by the shift.”
This should, however, make for some excellent bulletin board material for the Oilers. We saw the team tear apart Flames goaltender Jacob Markstrom in the 2022 playoffs a few years after he nixed a contract with Edmonton in favour of Calgary years prior, and this should develop some similar feelings.
Edmonton is a proud team with sky-high ambitions. The motivation was already there to advance to their first Stanley Cup Finals since 2006, and now an added goal is to make Tanev regret passing up an opportunity to be a part of their team.
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