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DALLAS — Ken Holland made his pitch for Taylor Hall but he never came with high heat. More like a slider.

“Yes, I did talk to them a few times,” said the Edmonton Oilers general manager, who was certainly intrigued by the New Jersey winger’s return to the team that drafted him but wasn’t about to sell the farm for a quick-fix rental whom Holland thought wasn’t going to resign with his hockey club in July as an unrestricted free-agent.

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While his team’s in a dogfight for a playoff spot, Holland had no stomach with giving up his first-round 2020 draft pick unconditionally; something the Arizona Coyotes did, along with a possible first in 2021 if they make the playoffs this season, win a round and Hall signs with them next July.

Now if Hall has a weather app on his cell phone he’ll probably see sunny and 17-20C every day there, and if Arizona were to offer eight years at $10.5 million that’s $84 million reasons to sign there.

But Edmonton isn’t warm and doesn’t have the Coyotes money. So Holland liked him but didn’t love the trade idea.

Hall theoretically would look wonderful with Connor McDavid although to play devil’s advocate for a second, both guys do like to carry it fast through the neutral zone and there’s only one puck.

The price was just too high for Holland, again for a half-season fix, when he doesn’t have a scintilla of a chance of signing him. Maybe he would have given New Jersey a second-round pick next June that would jump to a first if Oilers made the post-season but only then.

So Holland, just back from Moscow where he watched Jesse Puljujarvi and ex-Oiler Anton Slepyshev in the Channel One Cup, didn’t go down swinging or come with his best stuff.

He’s the GM, not the coach, and has to look at tomorrow as much as today and wasn’t about to gut the organization.

He also needs a third-line centre in a trade to drive a line, preferably a right-shot to replace Ryan Strome who never should have gotten away.