Edmonton Oilers ACQUIRE Isaac Howard From Tampa Bay Lightning! | Trade Reaction & Discussion

Edmonton Oilers ACQUIRE Isaac Howard From Tampa Bay Lightning! | Trade Reaction & Discussion

Hello hockey fans. Austin here with a bit of a late night breaking news story. The Edmonton Oilers have made a trade and this is a trade that’s been kind of in the works for a while. Lots of rumors, lots of smoke around this player, Isaac Howard from the Tampa Bay Lightning, recent Hobie Baker winner with Michigan. And for the Oilers, what did they give up? Well, they gave up their own highly touted prospect Sam O’Reilly of the London Knights, who is just coming off a Memorial Cup win and a OHL Championship win. Actually, back-to-back OHL championships for Sam O’Reilly. Now, there’s a lot of Oilers fans that will likely be disappointed that we had to give up a Sam O’Reilly in this trade. O’Reilly was tracking to be a two-way, probably a third line, maybe a low-end second line, two-way forward, uh, who could play center, penalty kill, really responsible in the Dzone. And he looked pretty okay in preeason last year in the couple games that he got to play. But Isaac Howard for, um, the Oilers and just coming off of his season in college hockey in the United States, winning the Hobie Baker Award. And, uh, wow. You know, as an Oilers fan, I’m very happy with this. I like Isaac Howard a lot. Isaac Howard is about 510 and Sam O’Reilly 6’1, but the Oilers get more skill on the wing once again. And if Isaac Howard pans out and Sam O’Reilly, sorry, Matt Seavoy, if they pan out the way that they could pan out, well, the Oilers are going to be in pretty good shape with some lowcost wingers to help produce some offense because the Oilers have lost quite a few players this off season and they’re going to have to have someone that can, you know, find the back of the net. Now, for the Oilers, Sam O’Reilly, he was probably another year or two away from being NHL ready. Isaac Howard, in my personal opinion, is probably close to NHL ready. And if he’s not, I don’t think he’ll need too much seasoning in the AHL. Look for him to really push for a roster spot in preeason. Now, here is the official tweet from the Edmonton Oilers. Uh Twitter account, the Oilers have acquired forward Isaac Howard from the Tampa Bay Lightning in exchange for forward Sam O’Reilly. And we’ve also signed Howard to a three-year entry-level contract. So, the Oilers have Isaac Howard locked up to a very good costcontrolled contract, which is what they’re going to have to have moving forward with uh Evan Bousard’s contract, new contract kicking in this season. Leon Dryidle’s new contract that also kicks in this season. And Conor McDavid, his new deal will kick in next season whenever he does sign with the Oilers. Now, taking a look at Isaac Howard from Byron Bader, um kind of, you know, his draft model projects Isaac Howard to well, a 67% chance of being an NHLer. The year that Isaac Howard was drafted, he was a 42% chance of becoming a star player. So, star probabilities. Again, this is all probabilities. This is just based on a lot of different stuff. You can go to hockey prospecting.com, check out Byron Bader’s content. Really good stuff. A really good follow as well to give you a good idea of how prospects kind of trend. I consider Byron Bader and hockey prospecting to be pretty accurate in how it evaluates players. It’s not always right. The models aren’t always right. But if this does kind of come to fruition, obviously the Oilers have a a NHL caliber player here, maybe a second line score uh playmaker. And for Isaac Howard as well, if you look at his full comparables now, there’s a couple busts in there. You have Vladimir Kachev, you have Nikolai Goldbin, but Logan Couture is also one of his comps. Uh and then Carl Soderberg as well, Lias Anderson. So there is a potential obviously I’m not thinking that Isaac Howard could become a Logan Couture but Logan Couture’s name being in the full comparable here is very interesting and if you take a look at Sam O’Reilly year he was drafted star probability 15% right now that is 6% Isaac Howard it is 8% and NHLer probabilities uh Sam O’Reilly went from 45% to 36% but again it’s very early in Sam Riley’s development cycle and the Tampa Bay Lightning they always find ways to develop players and I think Sam Riley is still going to be a very effective forward in the NHL one day. Uh it’s obviously sad to see a highly touted prospect go, but I do like what the Oilers got back. It’s a prospect for a prospect. Isaac Howard a little older, a little closer to NHL ready and someone that I think could have an impact on this team. Whether that’s on the second line or third line, I’m not quite sure yet, but we’ll see how Isaac Howard does for the Oilers. And if you take a look at recent Hobie Baker award winners, of course, Isaac Howard recently won it. Year before Mlin Celbrini, year before that, Adam Fentili. Uh, two years before that, Cole Cfield, Kale Mar is in there. Will Butcher, Adam Goddet, Jimmy VC, Jack Eel, Johnny Gudro, my goodness, basically since 20134. Most players that have won the Hobie Baker go on to have very good NHL careers or should have good NHL careers in the case of someone like Mlin Celibbrini and Adam Fantelli. Cole Coughfield obviously doing great. Kale Mar likely the best defenseman in the entire NHL. So the Hobie Baker award going to a player like Isaac Howard is a good sign for Edmonton. We’ll just take a look at the two players um you know hockey DB stats. This has no advanced analytics whatsoever. You’ll take a look at Sam O’Reilly with the London Knights. And then you can take a look at Isaac Howard with Michigan State University. Now Sam O’Reilly this past season coming off a 28 goal 71point campaign with London and he had 22 points in 17 games in the playoffs. Now Sam O’Reilly was playing a lot of second, mostly third line ice time with the London Knights because that team is just incredibly stacked. But Sam O’Reilly a very effective forward can produce very well and a plus 56 rating. again, he is one of those players where he is just so responsible his two-way play. Uh Steam Riley is going to be a very good two-way player. And then Isaac Howard, a little bit more explosive this season. Now, last year with Michigan State, he only had eight goals in 36 games, but this year that skyrocketed to 26 goals in 37 games, 52 points and a plus 19 rating. Um Isaac Howard obviously very, very good. I will leave a link to some Isaac Howard highlights in the description of this video because if you want to check out his play, if you want to check out more scouting reports, uh I’ll leave a little bit more information for Isaac Howard. I obviously haven’t seen Isaac Howard play a ton, but this is a prospect that I and many other Oilers fans have been paying close attention to, especially since it was being reported that Em was trying to acquire this player. And uh just on a random um Tuesday night on in July, the Oilers get that trade done. And once again, Edmonton mainstream media is nowhere near it because they never are. They never have the info. And actually, I think it got ahead of even guys like Elliot Freedman. The the Oilers themselves are the ones that uh put out the tweet. So, that’s always good to see. I like that the Oilers, you know, Stan Bowman keeps his cards to his chest. Nobody knows what’s going on. And is this a sign that the trade market’s going to start heating up in the rest of the NHL? Who the heck knows? But I do want to hear from all of you. Let me know all of your thoughts in the comments section below. Let me know if you’re excited about this player. Let me know what your thoughts are on having to give up Sam O’Reilly. Let me know your general thoughts on the offseason so far for Edmonton. Of course, uh I have talked about Evan Bousard’s contract. I have talked about the rumors that Darnell Nurse was asked to wave his no trade clause. And then Darnell Nurse put out uh uh an Instagram post, the the why you always lying. You know that meme? I think everyone knows that meme. He put out that on his Instagram and uh that’s kind of caused a little bit of a ruckus with Edmonton Media and Elliot Freeman on his 32 Thoughts podcast. So, we’ll see uh what all plays out in the rest of the offseason for the Edmonton Oilers. I hope you’re all enjoying your summer so far. I hope you’ve all been enjoying the nice weather if you’ve had any. I hope you’ve been enjoying the outdoors. I know I have. I’m starting to get a little bit swole trying to work out a little bit more. So, uh, maybe one day you’ll see me in a video and I’m just going to be absolutely jacked up, but not too much, right? I’ll see you all soon. Oil country, tell someone that you love them. And as always, fight like a kid, fight like Ben. Let’s go, Oilers. We’ll see you soon.

In today’s video Austin Hockey discusses the trade that saw Sam O’Reilly traded from the Edmonton Oilers to the Tampa Bay Lightning in exchange for Hobey Baker winner Isaac Howard! The Oilers also announced they signed Howard to a three-year entry-level contract. Austin shares his thoughts and reaction and discusses whether the Oilers have more moves planned. #oilers #edmontonoilers #nhl

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