Every NHL season, there's a boatload of trades that almost come to fruition, but for one reason another, fall apart before they're ever consummated. It could be that one team gets cold feet, a player's game suddenly takes a turn for the worse, or maybe a better deal comes along. No matter the reason, every year there are trades and deals aplenty that could have come and, with the benefit of hindsight and a little insider reporting, you can look back on and wonder "what could have been?" One such trade allegedly almost developed during the 2015 NHL Draft - usually silly season for trade rumors and reports anyway - and is said to have involved the Arizona Coyotes and the Boston Bruins.
Per Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman, the Coyotes and Don Maloney nearly came away from the draft with then-Bruins defenseman Dougie Hamilton, but Maloney, seeing a lack of center depth on his team, wound up holding tight to that No. 3-overall pick and selecting Dylan Strome.
"He had the No. 3 pick, and I think there was a time Boston thought that was going to be the deal," Friedman said Friday, while appearing on Calgary's Sportsnet 960, per Today's Slap Shot. "Leading up to that draft, Don Maloney kept saying, 'We've got to find another center in the Western Conference.'
"At the end of the day, he sat there the night before the draft. He said, 'Look, we can have Dougie Hamilton, or we can take our chance with Dylan Strome and get a center.'
"And he looked around and said, 'Where else are we going to find a center.'"
Strome, looked at as a likely "offensive dynamo" in the not-too-distant future, was sent back to the OHL in early Oct. so that he could continue his development while seeing extended minutes with the Erie Otters. The move allowed the Coyotes to preserve a season on Strome's entry-level deal at the same time as it protected him from what was, and still may very well be, a difficult season in Arizona.
In 25 games with the Otters this season, Strome has 16 goals and 37 assists. This, after a season spent in fellow 2015 draft pick Connor McDavid's shadow wherein Strome managed to gather 45 goals and 84 assists. He's been an integral part of an Otters team that now finds themselves in first place in the Midwest Division, the Western Conference, and five points ahead of the London Knights for the league-lead in points.
In short, it's early, but Strome has very much looked the part of a future NHL center. Hamilton, in his first season with the Calgary Flames, has been a disappointment, even taking into account his recently improved play. While he has scored twice and been held off the stat sheet only once during the Flames' current seven-game win streak, Hamilton simply hasn't managed the type of impact, especially offensively, that the team was hoping for when they wound up acquiring him from the Bruins for the No. 15 pick in the first round and the No. 45 and No. 52 picks in the second round this summer.
Now 31 games into his Flames tenure and fourth NHL season, Hamilton has four goals and seven assists and his ice time has dipped to an average of 19:17, almost two minutes less than he was seeing in 2014-15 with the Bruins.
Hamilton though, is still just 22 and likely to continue improving upon his abysmal early season play. Strome, despite strong OHL efforts and a quality preseason with the 'Yotes, isn't far enough along in his development that any definitive declarations can be made about his future.
There's no knowing how Hamilton would have looked on an Arizona team that is currently tied for fourth in the tragically underperforming Pacific - they're two points behind the Flames, ironically - and just lost starting netminder Mike Smith for a few months, though he'd certainly upgrade the talent on the blueline beyond Oliver Ekman-Larsson. Just like there's no knowing whether the Bruins would have even taken Strome or how he'd be developing in their system.
But it's always fun to wonder what could have been.
