The Edmonton Oilers have started off this season well under expectations. Coming off a Stanley Cup Final appearance most people expected them to dominate the league right out of the gate. The team has started 11–9–2, good enough for fourth in the Pacific Division, the second wild card spot, and five points ahead of where they were last year through 22 games. This season has been far from disaster but it still has more than a few people worried. For this reason the trade rumours and ideation have taken over the internet.
The Oilers have already done some tinkering, claiming Kasperi Kapanen off waivers from the St. Louis Blues on November 19 but at this point though Kapanen isn’t really what the Oilers need.
The Oilers, or at least their fans, for all their enthusiasm to make improvements to the team, find themselves in an especially sour pickle. Oilers GM Stan Bowman is facing a very tight cap, currently under $400k in cap space which means someone needs to be traded in order to fit someone else. This is all well and good except that no trade partner wants a cap dump player unless they get some actual value, and for the Oilers all they can really offer is future value. Here are the assets they are currently playing with.
Future picks with value
I’m listing these first because they are probably the most important pieces. The Oilers have their 2025 second, third, sixth, and seventh round picks to give, all seven 2026 picks, and all but their fourth round pick in 2027. If for example, the Oilers wanted to get a goalie like John Gibson at $6.4M, whose name has been thrown into the ring, they have no choice but to throw in a healthy amount of picks and/or prospects, both as value to the Anaheim Ducks and to convince them to retain salary. The Oilers are up against the wall so far as the cap goes, a trade partner could make them overpay heavily.
So far as prospects go, the Oilers have a few with some value: last year’s first-round pick Sam O’Reilly, as well as Matthew Savoie, Noah Philp, Roby Jarventie, Brady Stonehouse, and Olivier Rodrigue. I don’t see Philp going, he’s the first call up from the minors and plays centre. Guys like Savoie, Rodrigue, and O’Reilly are really hard to give up as they show quite a bit of promise and yet the rest aren’t going to make any GM’s hearts beat faster, so I could see them asking for one of the first four.
Preferably for the Oilers, I’d say that picks are likely to be the main futures part any deal that might occur.
Jeff Skinner is an unfortunate easy choice
Jeff Skinner is the obvious first player to look at, and that is truly unfortunate. Not because he’s having such a spectacular year, but because he was only acquired in this past off-season. Signing a player who you really hoped would help the team win the cup then trading them 22 games into the season is a really tough look. At seven points in 22 games, a 26-point pace, Skinner just isn’t cutting the cake. I’ll be the first to admit that I was wrong about Skinner, though I’d like to see him play with Viktor Arvidsson and Leon Draisaitl more, but at this point he’s worth a lot more as a trade piece.
The main draw with Skinner is that he’s scoring like a fourth liner but making $3M, so getting rid of him doesn’t hurt the team much and is decent cap relief. As mentioned earlier, Skinner is one of those pieces who provides little value to a trade partner, so any trade involving Skinner will have to include picks or prospects.
Would be difficult to see Adam Henrique go
Adam Henrique is in a similar boat to Jeff Skinner, he is also being paid $3M and has one less point in the same amount of time. Expectations are not as high for Henrique as they were for Skinner coming into this season but Henrique hasn’t been as good as the Oilers faithful have hoped either. Henrique is a career 47-point player who is trending towards 22 points this season. He has had six 20-goal seasons, but is on pace for more, though he has been putting up more points recently.
Trading Henrique is harder for the Oilers management to swallow though because it really hurts their centre depth. If they don’t trade for a centre, which is not what fans are clamoring for, they would need to bring up a rookie, Noah Philp, say. Philp looked solid in his three-game stint in the NHL this year but third and fourth line centres of Philp and Derek Ryan starts to look a little thin.
At this point I’d say Henrique has more intrinsic value than Skinner, but he would still need to be packaged with picks or prospects. If I’m Bowman, I’m trading one of these two.
Viktor Arvidsson could be good value
Though I doubt the Oilers would trade Viktor Arvidsson there are some arguments to be made. First is that he, like Skinner and Henrique is putting up far fewer points than expected so far. Second, Arvidsson is injury prone, he has never played a full season and only been close three times in his career, he is already missing time due to injury.
Third, Arvidsson has more more value as a player, he has scored at a 60-point pace six times in his career, he wouldn’t need to be packaged with nearly as much to make a deal go through. Fourth, he’s making $4M so the cap relief is significant, the Oilers could look at some decent players in return.
Again, I doubt this will happen, the Vasily Podkolzin-Draisaitl-Arvidsson line has looked solid and the Oilers won’t want to go back to the eternal purgatory of finding skilled players to play with Draisaitl instead of hoping a third liner will work out. Also, for the same reason that other GMs would take Arvidsson for Arvdisson’s sake alone, there is belief that he will be able to reverse his slow production with the Oilers.
Mattias Janmark and Connor Brown offer the same value
The two are very similar players and have similar trade value. Both Mattias Janmark and Connor Brown having decent starts to the season, for this reason they may have more trade value then you might expect. Given their hardworking nature and performance in the playoffs, they are more likely deadline trades, but for the same reason the Oilers likely won’t want to get rid of them. In my opinion, they have more value on the team, as their $1.45 and $1M salary caps are not much help in the name of cap relief.
Could Edmonton let him go?
This is nearly blasphemous to suggest as Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is the longest tenured player on the roster, but the arguments are similar to Arvidssons. Nugent Hopkins is having a slow start, commands a decent return from trade partners, and is making $5.125M a year.
I would say this is nearly impossible though given that he plays on a historically, extremely successful line with Connor McDavid nor do I think it’s a good idea as he has a lot of potential for how much money he’s making. The Oilers can’t afford to throw away good contracts of proven players.
In the end, all I can say is that as much as I like to play armchair GM, I’m really happy I’m not in Stan Bowman’s shoes right now.
I understand the historical sentiment with RNH but the fact of the matter is that he has been a shadow of his past self, not only this season but much of last season as well. I’ve seen various times this year where he was completely out of position, almost like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be doing, and his playmaking and scoring have been abysmal. Sometimes, a fresh start can do wonders for a player who was once a special one.