The Edmonton Oilers made a franchise altering trade to acquire Mattias Ekholm in 2023, but it was very close to being Jakob Chychrun headed to Alberta instead.

At the 2023 trade deadline, the Oilers made the blockbuster move to trade Tyson Barrie, Reid Schaefer, and two draft picks for Ekholm. The Swedish defenceman from Nashville was pretty underrated then.

However, NHL insider Frank Seravalli is reporting that the Oilers were incredibly close to acquiring Chychrun instead of Ekholm.

»In the last hour before making [the Mattias Ekholm] deal, I had the tweets weird up, ready to tweet that the Oilers were getting Jakob Chychrun I think Ken Holland was always leaning more toward Ekholm than Chychrun, but it came down to a value thing.»

– Frank Seravalli

A few days after Ekholm was dealt to the Oilers, the Arizona Coyotes dealt Chychrun to the Ottawa Senators for a first round draft pick and two second round picks.

Perhaps the Coyotes wanted more purely future assets in draft picks, rather than the player and prospect package the Oilers sent Nashville.

Edmonton Oilers Made the Right Decision to Pick Ekholm over Chychrun

The Ekholm trade has been considered a slam dunk win for the Oilers for some time now, but hearing the alternate reality of acquiring Chychrun enforced how perfect a player the Swedish defender is for this team.

Ekholm’s steady two way game, and particularly his success in the defensive zone, was the perfect addition for the Oilers.

Chychrun is more of an offensive player, and had the Oilers acquired him instead, they’d still have a major zone problem with their first pair defence. Ekholm is the perfect compliment to the offensive defender in Bouchard, in a way that Chychrun wouldn’t be.

Another almost-Oilers trade came to light recently too, sending Leon Draisaitl to the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2019 in exchange for Nikita Kucherov.

Ken Holland rightly takes a lot of flak from Oilers fans for some truly brutal moves in his time in Edmonton, but credit where it’s due – he identified a heavily underrated talent in Mattias Ekholm.