Kirby Dach's name surfaced on Edmonton's updated trade target list, and the Oilers aren't hiding what they need.
A target list making the rounds since Thursday has Dach listed as a trade priority, alongside Jake Debrusk and free agent Claude Giroux.
Edmonton finished 41-30-11 this season, good for 93 points and a plus-13 goal differential. That's a team built to win now, not rebuild through futures.
Dach posted 15 points in 37 games with Montreal this year, 8 goals and 7 assists, sitting at minus-2. His cap hit comes in at 3,362,500 dollars.
He's cooled off lately too. Just 1 point over his last 10 games and a minus-5 stretch that raises real questions about fit and cost.
Is a 25-year-old center coming off a quiet second half really the centerpiece of a contender's blue-line and forward retool? That's the part nobody's answering yet.
General manager Stan Bowman took over in Edmonton back in July of 2024, and lists like this one tend to follow him around.
Why Jake Debrusk and Claude Giroux complicate the picture
Debrusk put up 42 points in 81 games with Vancouver, 23 goals and 19 assists, but his minus-31 rating is hard to ignore for a team chasing playoff hockey.
Giroux, still productive at 38 with 49 points in 82 games and a plus-20 mark in Ottawa, fits a different kind of need. Term and term alone make him the safer swing.
Throwing both names on the same board as Dach feels less like a plan and more like a grocery list somebody wrote before checking what's actually in the fridge.
The same report floats defensemen Spencer Stastney and Ty Emberson as trade board depth pieces, which tells you Edmonton is casting wide, not narrow.
That's the real story here. A roster with a plus-13 differential and a first-round ceiling doesn't need a wish list, it needs a decision.
Bowman has the term. Whether he has the appetite to actually pull one of these names off the board before training camp is the question that matters.
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Should the Oilers actually trade for Kirby Dach this summer?
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