It wasn’t a blockbuster, but when the Edmonton Oilers dealt defenceman Brandon Davidson to Montreal for small centre David Desharnais, it was a welcome bit of playoff prep for a team that’s spent a decade as a Deadline Day seller.
This wasn’t the kind of trade that puts a team over the top, rather one that inserts a veteran player into the Oilers forward ranks ahead of a Drake Cagguila or Jujhar Khaira, two rookies who lack the experience of the 30-year-old Desharnais.
“You check off a lot of the boxes with this player,” Oilers general manager Peter Chiarelli told the Sportsnet broadcast between periods of his team’s game in St. Louis Tuesday. “He’s got experience — playoff experience (38 games). He’s a smart player, with and without the puck. I‘ve seen a lot of him (when Chiarelli worked) in Ottawa, and a lot of him in Boston.
“He’s had a bit of a tough year this year, but part of making these trades is you look at what motivates the player.”
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Desharnais — just five-foot-seven and 175 pounds — has played only 31 games this season, with four goals and 10 points for Montreal. He is billed as quietly competitive and smart, the usual traits of undersized players who were never drafted into the NHL.
What Desharnais does not do, however, is help the Oilers in the faceoff circle. Edmonton ranks dead last in the NHL at faceoffs, but Desharnais went only 47.8 per cent while taking the fifth-most draws among Montreal centremen.
One would assess that Chiarelli has seen something that he likes in this player when he was in the front offices of Montreal and Boston, two teams that would have given Chiarelli multiple viewings of the pending UFA.
As for Davidson, he stacked up as the obvious choice for the Vegas Golden Knights among those players who would be exposed by Edmonton in the upcoming expansion draft. He is a 25-year-old former sixth-round draft pick of the Oilers who has had his own injury issues the past couple of years.
The Oilers are deep organizationally in defenceman, however, and were in the market for a depth centreman to play behind Connor McDavid, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Mark Letestu. Desharnais becomes that player.
