Daily Faceoff: Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk on Jonathan Toews trade speculation.
Seravalli: “When you look at some of the teams that may be interested in a guy like Jonathan Toews, I’d say a couple teams stand out.
The Colorado Avalanche are one, the Edmonton Oilers would be another. I wonder about the Carolina Hurricanes and some of these other playoff-bound teams that could be in the market for some help down the middle.
I think Edmonton it’s a secondary priority for the Oilers at the moment. I believe their top objective right now is to add some help on the backend. So that’s certainly something that they would be at looking to fulfill first before maybe pivoting to something like this.
But when you look at Jonathan Toews, the real question is, what exactly is he bringing to your lineup right now? For the longest time in his career he was a franchise player. We were thinking 2014 Sochi Olympics, the big debate would be if you were starting a franchise, coming off two Stanley Cups with the Chicago Blackhawks, would you want to center it around Jonathan Toews or Sidney Crosby? That’s the type of career Toews was having up to that moment.
Then after that he sort of transitioned to be what we’d call in our architect rankings series, a clutch player. Someone that is clutch, is code word for Selke. Someone that is a complete 200-foot player. A general pain in the ass to play against.
And Toews has certainly lost some of that with the age curve. And so I think that’s what teams would really like to figure out. In an ideal role, in an ideal setting, on a contending team.
Is he a second-line center? Is he a third-line center? And so as we go through our scouting reports on DailyFaceoff.com, we’ll attempt to answer that and figure out where exactly Jonathan Toews may fit Tyler.”
Yaremchuk: “I think that will be really interesting. Obviously, you mentioned the idea of maybe the Edmonton Oilers being a team that could fit with Toews and how dangerous they could almost be with him sliding in that third line.
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But a guy just because of the winning pedigree, right Frank? I think a lot of teams and a lot of GMs could look at that and king of go, man, he’s, you said, clutch player. That’s a guy you just sprinkle into your lineup, depth role, and all of sudden you’re that much better as a group in your top-nine.”
