Friedman: Perron trade timeline cooled; "A lot of teams" covet Eberle

Elliotte Friedman was on Toronto’s Sportsnet 590 on Friday morning.

On an update on the David Perron trade, which had seemed to be close the other day:

 “I think it did cool a bit. I was really certain a couple of days ago he was going to get dealt. I still think he’s going to get traded, it just may not be as quick as the timeline I originally presented.

“I think there’s a couple of things going on. No. 1, I don’t think they’re – right now, when you’re desperate, it’s harder to make a good trade and I think they want to be careful. I don’t think they’re getting as much as they had hoped in terms of offers.

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“That’s No. 1. And No. 2, I think it was a pretty wild week in Edmonton. They had that terrible game last Saturday night against Chicago. On Sunday, I think there was a lot of soul-searching. ‘We’ve got to tear it down a bit here.’ And I think during the week they kind of went through some other thinking, like, ‘This is a dangerous time for us. We can make the kind of bad trade that sets us back even further.’ So I think they kind of put the brakes on it a little bit and said, ‘Let’s really think this thing through.’

“I think there’s a lot of teams trying to find out if they would deal Eberle. I think Edmonton is in a point of view where if we’re going to deal one of our core players – I don’t think they really want to – they’re going to sit down there and think is now the right time to do it, or do you wait until the summer, when there’s more teams that maybe have the cap room to make the move, and let’s let not make a decision that hurts us even more even long term.”

Source: Sportsnet 590/ Transcript: Nichols on Hockey