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Edmonton’s biggest need remains a No. 1 d-man. Nashville has two of them, Roman Josi and Shea Weber. Of the two, Josi is younger, 25, Weber, 30. Josi plays slightly more time-on-ice than Weber, 24:40 to 24:26. Josi has been getting slightly more points per game than Weber, 0.73 to 0.67 this year. Most importantly by far, however, is that Josi has a cap-friendly contract, while Weber has a cap killer of a deal that has the potential to greatly harm a franchise for a long stretch of time.

Josi’s contract at $4 million per until 2019-20 is one of the NHL’s great bargains for the team. Weber’s contract at $7.8 million per until 2025-26, until Weber is 40, only makes sense if Weber can defy time and injury like few other NHL d-men have done. Now in the last three years of this deal he only makes $1 million per, despite that massive $7.8 million cap hit, so perhaps the plan is he’ll retire if he can’t perform any longer. Maybe a team will only have to bear that $7.8 million cap hit until 2022-23, when Weber is 37.

In his commentary, Friedman says that Nashville is now unwilling to part with Weber. Just as likely, any GM who cares for the long-term health of his franchise is dubious about taking on a 30-year-old player with an utterly monster contract in terms of pay and term.

Nashville has a number of other d-men whom the Oilers might be interested in, including small but skilled Ryan Ellis, big and skilled Seth Jones and Mattias Ekholm. To properly evaluate these players you’d have to go back and watch all their shifts played in the last 20 or 25 games, so I’m not going to offer an informed opinion on their play. That said, you can see from time-on-ice numbers that the Nashville coaching staff, which desperately hopes to win every game and sees every shift and practice, hands out the most time-on-ice to Josi, then Weber, and after that there’s a big drop-off to Ryan Ellis 19:50 per game, Seth Jones, 19:45, and Ekholm, 18:09. Jones is a tall, skilled player with great skills and puck sense, and a former high first round pick. He’d be the obvious target if the Oilers were to move a player like Nugent-Hopkins, though, again, not having thoroughly studied Jones I can only go on what others say about his game.