Dreger: MacTavish's hands tied on trade front

Darren Dreger was on Edmonton’s TSN 1260 on Thursday morning.

On who should be held responsible for the deficiencies in the Oilers’ roster, since they seem to staying exactly in the same place:

“Right. And I agree with that. And here’s a reality check for all of us. Do we honestly think Craig MacTavish is sitting in his office just going, ‘Yeah, I don’t know what I’m going to do today. I’m going to play Solitaire because there’s not a whole lot going on.’

“No. I mean, these guys work incredibly hard. And I can tell you because I spend a lot of time on a daily basis checking in with general managers, NHL executives obviously scouring on the trade front. Looking for some little shred of information that we can run with. But the truth is there’s just nothing going right now.

“Craig MacTavish I’m sure could make a deal for a fourth-line centre, a spare part on a team that isn’t better than what he has, or isn’t better than what he’s got coming, and say to the Oilers Nation – ‘Okay, here’s a centre. Good for me. I just found a centre via trade.’ But is that going to help the team? It’s not.

Related: Dreger on Eakins' job, MacT's trade efforts, Oilers' maturity

“So it’s like the league right now is in financial paralysis. No one is willing to make that deal. Unless you’re willing to take on a big contract. Now, Marc Bergevin of the Montreal Canadiens acquired Sergei Gonchar from the Dallas Stars for Travis Moen. That’s bad money coming in and bad contract going out. That’s how you make deals today in the National Hockey League in the first quarter of the regular season.

“So yeah, you can blame Craig MacTavish for not bringing these players in, and not drafting and all of those things, but I don’t know. When I look at the Oilers and I look at their top six, it looks pretty good to me. And I see the holes on the back end and we’re still waiting to see if there’s a goaltender that’s going to emerge, but it’s not as easy as it sounds filling those holes.”

Source: TSN 1260/ Transcript: Nichols on Hockey