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Edmonton Oilers forward Nail Yakupov asked to be traded earlier in the season. The news  was tweeted by Igor Eronko of Sport-Express . According to Eronko, Yakupov asked to be traded and the Oilers gave him permission to speak to other teams.   A few were interested, but a deal wasn’t reached. A full story can be found on Sport-Express.  The interview happened last week in San Jose.   When you came to a point to get traded, was there any ground to think it would happen? “Absolutely. As far as I know trade has come very close. I've been out of a suitcase. Me and my agent Igor Larionov were given permission to talk to other teams. A number of teams were interested. But at the last moment something went wrong. And I'm still here.” It was reported Montreal, Winnipeg, New Jersey and Carolina were interested. Which one was interested the most and which would you prefer? “The list of teams that were interested was bigger, I could name couple more of them. And I don’t think it makes sense to discuss which team could get me or where I would like to be moved. Thing is this did not happen, and I'm still in the Oilers. Let’s see what will happen in the summer. There will be a lot more time to negotiate, and it will be much easier to make the trade happen. But ultimately everything depends on the Oilers.” Did you request a trade? “Yes, I did. But not in person, my job is just to play hockey. Agent was dealing with this.” What Larionov advised you to do in this situation? “Just to play. Live a normal hockey live. Everyone must do their job. I tried hard, trained a lot, worked on my game and tried to enjoy hockey. Talks on the trade - none of my business.” Do not you think about going back to the KHL? “No and no again.”  There are other interesting tidbits from the interview. Yakupov also noted how much he enjoyed playing with 2015 No. 1 overall pick Connor McDavid early in the year but knew his time playing with McDavid would be short-lived when injured Oilers became healthy.  But by the beginning of the season several of our players were injured, and that's when I got the chance to play in top-six with McDavid. In the camp we were in different lines. And if there were no injuries to some guys, I would not play with him at all. Coach put us together only in the third game of the regular season. But we found a chemistry and I couldn't even imagine how everything will turn out. As soon as guys got healthy I was demoted to the bottom six. Yakupov was also asked why he hasn’t had the same success as other Russians like Vladimir Tarasenko, Nikita Kucherov and Evgeny Kuznetsov and pointed to how “when your hands are tied up” it’s hard to help the team win, meaning if you’re not playing a top-six role. The Oilers took Yakupov with the No. 1 overall pick in 2012. He came in with hype as a goal scorer but hasn’t reached his potential in four years as an NHL player. He had 17 goals in 48 games his rookie year in 2012-13, but his highest total since then was 14 last season. This year he has six goals in 56 games played. He got tangled up with a linesman in late November and missed 22 games with an ankle injury.  Before the year he signed a two-year $5 million contract extension through 2016-17.  In early March, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman pointed out how if Yakupov isn’t playing top line minutes , being with the Oilers may not make a lot of sense. With Benoit Pouliot injured, Nail Yakupov moves back up the Oiler depth chart. This bears watching. There were rumours over the weekend Yakupov asked for a trade, but I don’t think that’s a fair picture. He’s got zero complaints about living in Edmonton. And, from what I understand, there are no issues when he’s with one of the team’s high-end offensive centres. However, he was moved down recently and, if that’s his future, it doesn’t make sense to keep him. He’s not suited for it. The Oilers may choose to trade him anyway. Before the trade deadline, Edmonton general manager Peter Chiarelli said there would be changes to his team’s core. Chiarelli has often said that he needed a year to evaluate the Oilers before making major decisions. Chiarelli has also said he’d like to see the Oilers with all their centers healthy  "because you have three talented centermen, you can see how the wings can flourish.” The Oilers have been without McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins for prolonged periods this season. This is a story to watch as Chiarelli continues to try to re-shape Edmonton in the offseason. As a talented younger player, Yakupov could eventually draw some offseason interest for the right price.  With the trade request, Yakupov joins Tampa Bay Lightning forward Jonathan Drouin and Columbus Blue Jackets forward Kerby Rychel as talented youngsters looking to move on to different organizations.  s/t Igor Eronko for the translation help. MORE FROM YAHOO HOCKEY     - - - - - - - Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper   Continue to Article

March 27, 2016 7:29:pm EST

Whether it happens in the next game or next week, the Presidents' Trophy is going to take care of itself for Washington. What the Capitals might be growing more concerned with heading into Monday night's home meeting with Columbus is ensuring they enter the postseason playing better 5-on-5 hockey than they have in the last two games. After Saturday's 4-0 home loss to St. Louis and Friday's 1-0 overtime win in New Jersey, Washington (53-16-5) doesn't have a traditional 5-on-5 goal in its last eight periods. Continue to Article

March 27, 2016 1:52:pm EST

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March 25, 2016 9:30:pm EST

The Washington Capitals have already locked up the Presidents' Trophy, which a lot of people still inexplicably poo-poo as somehow not being all that impressive a feat. Loser point or not, weird ways to determine a winner or not, the Caps sit at 109 points after 72 games, which is a bananas number no matter which way you choose to look at it. That's a pace for more than 124 points, a number that would effectively tie what the Red Wings did in 2005-06. However, that's off the pace set by Chicago in the lockout-shortened season a few years ago, when they finished with 77 in 48, which might have translated to nearly 132 in 82. [ Join a Yahoo Daily Fantasy Hockey contest today ] And already, there seems to be plenty of fretting that despite clinching the Presidents' Trophy with more than 10 games to go, this is somehow a team that's not equipped for a deep playoff run. Mainly, that seems to be paranoia stemming from “This is the Capitals we're talking about!” memories of 2009-10 and so on. But the thing is, if you win the Presidents' Trophy, you're far more likely to win the Stanley Cup than if you finish at any other seed, Nos. 2-16. Two regular-season champions have gone on to win the Cup since the implementation of the shootout, and another lost (rather famously) in the Cup Final.   In general, your ability to win the most games out of 82 should understandably be a fairly good predictor of success in a three-month run during which you need to win 16 out of a maximum 28. There are very teams to win the Presidents' Trophy recently who you could even remotely criticize as not being particularly impressive. Maybe last year's New York Rangers, a marginally effective possession team propped up by Henrik Lundqvist and Cam Talbot, are the only ones that approach that level. They never gave you much of a reason to think they were all that great, but the goaltending was good enough that you had to acknowledge that, come what may, they'd give literally anyone in the league a fight.   Of course, when it comes to really breaking down which recent Presidents' Trophy winner was the best, we are a bit limited by the data available. It's only since 2007-08 that on-ice event tracking got to the current level (this is the Behind The Net Era), but that still gives you eight previous winners to look at in the most modern version of the NHL. The easiest way for some people to break it down is by points per-game and goal differential. That's easy enough. These are the results of what should theoretically be an elite-level process, because goals are what you need to both cause and prevent to win, and wins are what you need to win the hardware here. Continue to Article

March 25, 2016 7:52:pm EST