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Here’s what Johansson told Matheson about Lucic asking for a trade: “Milan didn’t ask for a trade and Peter (GM Chiarelli) 100 per cent, has not come to us about moving Milan. If he wants to get out from under the contract, he has to talk to us.”

I accept there might well be a bit of spin here from Johansson, but the only really important thing in the agent’s message is his emphatic insistence that Lucic is coming back to Edmonton.

So while Karlsson has made it evident he’s unhappy and wants out of Ottawa (I have no idea if Skinner and Faulk want out of Carolina), the opposite message is coming from the Lucic camp.

Seravalli continued on to explore with Mitchell the possibility of Lucic getting traded: “Now the question is if the Oilers can somehow find a way to do that and is there a push from any other teams to try and make a move like that. Now that we’ve gotten past free agency, it almost seems like the urgency kind of falls off a cliff, once you’ve got to July 2, so what happens in that situation? How do you fill the hole on D (for the Oilers)? I just can’t imagine going into next season with all the issues they had to close out last season more or less and Peter Chiarelli basically saying, ‘Well, it’s up to you guys to figure it out.’ I mean, that’s not really how it works. It’s up to the manager to figure out a solution and find a way to make this team better. Because this team, on paper at least, certainly isn’t better.”

Photo by Larry MacDougal / THE CANADIAN PRESS

It would have been fine indeed for the Oilers to make more and better moves in recent weeks, but I haven’t seen any suggestions in the realm of the palatable about how Chiarelli could have greatly improved the squad. Seravalli and others may wish that Chiarelli had moved Lucic and traded for a top winger and a top d-man, but was any of that remotely possible? Only if the Oilers gave up Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, or Oscar Klefbom, and/or the ninth overall pick in the draft that was used to take Evan Bouchard. Would it have been wise to do make such moves? Or was it smarter to see if injured players like Andrej Sekera, Klefbom and Cam Talbot can bounce back, and if forwards like Jesse Puljujarvi, Ryan Strome, Jujhar Khaira, Drake Caggiula, Kailer Yamamoto and Ty Rattie might improve? Was it also not a good plan to see if coach Todd McLellan might be able to devise a better game plan with his new group of assistant coaches?