On Tuesday November 12 it was reported by Taylor Haase of DK Pittsburgh Sports that Kyle Dubas, GM of the Pittsburgh Penguins, had made it clear to his fellow league GMs that “everyone is available, except 87.” This came hot on the heels of the Pittsburgh Penguins loss to the Dallas Stars, in which the Stars scored six goals in the first period.
You can’t really say that this comment was made hastily, in frustration over the loss, or that he said it to spur on his flagging team because he never actually made this comment this to the media, it was only reported by insiders.
It is stated in the same article that the Penguins have promised Sidney Crosby that they would refrain from a full rebuild until he retires which could actually be a while. A similar promise was made to Alex Ovechkin so that he could effectively chase Wayne Gretzky’s goal record.
And yet, the very same day Lars Eller was traded to the Washington Capitals for a 2027 third- and 2025 fifth-round pick.
So this is an odd situation all around, are they giving up only 18 games into the season? Is Dubas intending to flip the picks he receives for players? If so, he may have a hard time doing that, there aren’t that many teams willing to sell this early in the season, especially meaningful players.
In any case, the real question is, can the Edmonton Oilers benefit from this?
What the Oilers have to offer
The problem here is that Dubas can make the Oilers pay through the nose on any deal Oilers GM Stan Bowman wants to make. The Oilers have started well under expectations and are under quite a bit of pressure to turn it around. To make matters worse they have only $1.3M in cap space so they may need the Penguins to retain some of the traded player’s salary. Kyle Dubas has 31 teams to trade with, but Edmonton only has one team who seems to be willing to trade significant pieces this early in the season.
Despite the comment “everyone is available, except 87,” Evgeni Malkin, Bryan Rust, Erik Karlsson, and Kris Letang all have full no-move clauses, and several other players have no-trade lists of varying lengths.
The Oilers have second-, third-, fifth- and sixth-round draft picks in 2025, the full slate in 2026, and a full slate minus a fourth round in 2027 to give.
Pettersson as a defensive option
Marcus Pettersson is probably the most attractive, semi-realistic trade target for the Oilers. The 6’4″, 28-year-old, left-handed defenceman put up a career high 30 points last year and is currently on pace to break it again. All his on-ice stats except GF% are above 50%, he is one of not many Pittsburgh defencemen for which that is true.
The Oilers team defence has’t been spectacular, they have the 12th highest GA/GP in the league at 3.19 and the 16th worst xGA. Pettersson could be a big help in shoring up the defence.
The negatives are first, that Pettersson carries just over a $4M cap hit and that’s tough for the Oilers to get around. The Oilers carry 12 forwards and seven defencemen. If they trade a forward away they have to bring one up from the minors, so any forwards they could stomach losing—Derek Ryan, Connor Brown, Corey Perry, or Mattias Janmark—would barely help with the cap at all. Since they carry seven defencemen, they could send one down and trade another, which would help the cap situation more. Still the Penguins would have to retain $1.5M to 2M so draft picks would have to be included.
Trading a player with a bigger cap hit, like Adam Henrique, Jeff Skinner, or Brett Kulak is perhaps possible, but at that point it might not be worth it, is the team significantly better trading one of those for Pettersson?
The second problem is that Pettersson is left-handed, which is where Edmonton’s more reliable defencemen already play, so someone would have to play on their off-side. All in all this is a really hard deal for the Oilers to get done.
Add youth with O’Connor
This is a much easier trade for the Oilers to make. Drew O’Connor is only making $925k, is 6’3″, and is only 26-years-old. The Oilers could use a little more youth in their lineup since losing Ryan McLeod, Philip Broberg, and Dylan Holloway. O’Connor had only 33 points last year but 16 of them were goals, he has been trusted to play with Crosby last year and this year, and plays on the first penalty kill. While he isn’t going to be such an offensive force, he has potential and you can basically make this trade one-for-one with a later round pick to sweeten the pot.
Lizotte as the best option
In my personal opinion this is the best of the more realistic trades the Oilers can make. Blake Lizotte is making $1.85M as a 26-years-old, and has two goals in six games so far this year. He plays on the fourth line and still has on-ice stats over 50%, including being one of three players on the Penguins with GF% at or over 50%, though this is in very limited ice-time. The Oilers could also get this done with a one-for-one trade with a late round pick.
Nedeljkovic probably isn’t the goaltending answer
This is neither likely nor wise but it is a possibility so I’m including it for the sake of completeness. Even though I would say that what the Oilers need most at this very moment is stable goaltending, this is not the way to go about it. Alex Nedeljkovic did have a very impressive “year” with Carolina in 2020–21, this was only for a 23-game stretch. Since then he has been very unstable and the $2.5M cap hit is both overpriced and difficult for the Oilers to make work right now.
The pro for Nedeljkovic is that he was a .932 SV%, 1.9 GAA goalie for those 23 games, so the argument could be made that he does have it in him. However, for the reasons given above, and the fact that Stuart Skinner can be a better goalie than he has been, I don’t think this is the right path for the Oilers.
Some other possibilities are Anthony Beauvillier, or Samuel Poulin, or a reunion with Jesse Puljujarvi. These are players like O’Connor and Lizotte, they aren’t spectacular but you hope they may shine with a change of scenery.
Photo by Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire
stats from NHL.com, naturalstattrick.com, moneypuck.com
I would likely wait until our ideal player becomes available. I want a legit top 4 RD. The other benefit to waiting is it lets you know what players are not working out. If I were trading a forward right now it would likely be Skinner. I know he has a no move clause, but would he rather play 4th line with no power play time on the oilers, or move to a team that would use them in their top 6?
It is pretty easy to give up on Skinner, when the team as a whole had a terrible start.
No rush yet into a trade of likely only questionable help available. work with what you have for now, unless of course if everything falls apart. Around trade deadline is probably right.