Oilers have 1 trade piece to land one of these 3 major needs before deadline originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

The Edmonton Oilers would like to improve by Friday’s NHL trade deadline.

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The problem is that they don’t have a ton of great assets to trade away. Except for maybe one.

The Athletic’s Allan Mitchell writes that Matt Savoie is the guy the Oilers could try and use to extract value in a deal.

And this is what Mitchell says the target should be in a Savoie trade: “The target could be a bigger winger, a right-handed defenseman or a No. 3 center.”

Well, one player for three options. The Oilers are unlikely to get more than one of those things for Savoie, but one is better than none.

“Oilers general manager Stan Bowman doesn’t have a massive number of valuable trade pieces at this year’s deadline,” Mitchell writes. “If the goal is a major addition to the roster, the ask will be painful. Bowman will attempt to make a deal with the 2027 first-round selection, but Savoie is the one young player with enough value to secure a top-flight acquisition at the deadline.”

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Savoie is 22 years old and was the No. 9 overall pick by the Buffalo Sabres in the 2022 NHL Draft.

This season, Savoie has played 62 games at the NHL level and has 10 goals and 15 assists.

He’s also a great penalty killer.

“Savoie has the lowest rate of any Oilers forward when it comes to making mistakes on the PK that lead to Grade A shots against,” recently wrote David Staples of the Edmonton Journal. “In 90 minutes of penalty kill time on ice, Savoie has made just 12 mistakes leading to Grade A shots against, the lowest rate of anyone on the team, just 0.27 mistakes on Grade A shots per two minutes of PK time. Compare that to veteran Mattias Janmark who has made 25 such mistakes in just 64 PK minutes, a rate of 0.78 per two minutes.”

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That’s a player another team could want, especially considering his youth. So we’ll see if the Oilers can make something happen.

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