2010 NHL draft: Oilers willing to listen for trades, Bruins not so much

With the 2010 NHL draft coming our way next weekend, business is starting to pick up for the top two teams as far as trade discussions go and it’s fun to see the politicking that goes on as both the Edmonton Oilers and Boston Bruins are handling things quite differently.

With the first pick in the draft, the Oilers are apparently all ears, you know, just in case someone gets anxious to get the right to pick Tyler Seguin or Taylor Hall, at least TSN’s Darren Dreger has heard as much.

Oilers general manager Steve Tambellini says teams continue to call, inquiring about what it might take to convince Edmonton to trade the first overall pick in next week’s NHL Entry Draft.

Tambellini’s response remains the same; he says he’s not sure what it would take to move such a valuable asset, but he’s willing to listen and consider all offers.

I’m sure it’s just lip service, but having the general manager of a team say that he’s not sure what it would take to get the top pick in the draft away from him seems baffling. Then again, given how far out of the running for the playoffs the Oilers were last year and how they weren’t able to cast a spell on Dany Heatley to get him to come to Edmonton... Perhaps we shouldn’t be so shocked.

Then again, the Oilers have some dynamic youth on the way in the form of Jordan Eberle and Magnus Paajarvi-Svensson, ditching out on their choice of Seguin or Hall to get a more established playmaker (Ottawa’s Jason Spezza has been rumored) could be a franchise-defining move. Tread carefully, Tambellini.

As for the Bruins, general manager Peter Chiarelli is being a bit more obvious about his intentions regarding the Seguin/Hall debate as the Boston Globe’s Fluto Shinozawa found out.

“I’m not moving it,” Chiarelli said of the No. 2 position. “We’re going to take one of those two forwards.”

That probably won’t stop teams from making phone calls to Chiarelli, but then again, the Bruins also have the 15th overall selection in the draft as well. Perhaps someone thinks they might be able to pry that away from Boston but for the Bruins, this is their big opportunity to add a couple of fantastic young pieces to a farm system that was starting to look bleak. With former Denver University standout Joe Colborne coming into the system as well as last year’s first round pick and the picks from this year’s draft coming soon, business is about to pick up youth-wise.