Last Saturday night, the Edmonton Oilers welcomed St. Louis Blues into town. This would have been a game like any other had it not been for the events of late summer, when both Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg signed offer sheets as restricted free agents and joined the Blues. Given their strong performances in last season’s Stanley Cup Playoffs and tremendous potential demonstrated, their exit from Edmonton was a stinger.
Early into this season, both Broberg and Holloway have found success with their new team. Broberg has put up 12 points in 16 games while averaging just over 20 minutes of ice time per game. To put it into perspective, he has scored 13 points across 81 contests in the three seasons with the Oilers. Holloway has 17 points in 28 games, close to matching the point total he has had with the Oilers (18 points across 89 games).
In their game on Saturday, Broberg was held off the scoresheet while Holloway managed to sneak a shot past Stuart Skinner. Fortunately for the Rogers Place faithful, the home town team prevailed while Broberg seemed to struggle with knowing how to defend his former teammate, Connor McDavid. How have the former Oilers’ fared when playing their former squad? Let’s discuss a few cases below.
Taylor Hall
In one of the most stunning trades in the franchise’s recent history, Taylor Hall was swapped for Adam Larsson of the New Jersey Devils just prior to the 2016–17 season. At the time, then General Manager Peter Chiarelli was looking to improve team’s defence and this move came at a cost of the former number one draft pick from the “Taylor versus Tyler (Seguin)” draft. The trade seemed to have provided success for both teams as Oilers managed to end their playoff drought since the 2005–06 season while Hall won the Hart Memorial Trophy with the Devils in the 2017–18 campaign.
Hall played two games against the Oilers in his debut season with the Devils. Oilers won both of these match-ups, played five days apart, with Hall putting up one assist in the second of the two games.
Unfortunately for Hall, injuries have not been kind to him and have cause him to miss significant time. Following three and half season with the Devils, Hall would play with the Arizona Coyotes, Buffalo Sabres and Boston Bruins. Currently, he is a member of the rebuilding Chicago Blackhawks, where he is teaming up with the next generation’s Connor, Connor Bedard.
Jordan Eberle
Jordan Eberle was one of the best players on a team that did not have a lot going for it during its’ 11 year playoff drought. He made his Oilers’ debut the same season as Taylor Hall (with a highlight reel goal) and would end up spending one more season in Edmonton than Hall, allowing him to experience Edmonton’s playoff atmosphere after being a part of so many rebuilding teams. Eberle was truly one of the most consistent players of that Oilers’ era.
Eberle was traded in the off-season before the 2017–18 season to the New York Islanders in exchange for Ryan Strome. In the two games between the teams that season, Oilers and Islanders had low scoring 1–1 affairs heading into extra frames where Oilers won both games. Eberle scored the game-tying goal on a pass from Matt Barzal in the first of the two games while being held scoreless in his return to Edmonton six months later.
Eberle has since moved on from the Islanders after he was selected by the Seattle Kraken in the 2021 NHL Expansion Draft. He has remained a consistent player and heading into the 2024–25 season, he was named the second captain in the Kraken history. He is currently recovering from a pelvic surgery following a lower body injury and will be sidelined at least until February 2025.
Devan Dubnyk
Selected at number 14 of the 2004 NHL Entry Draft, Devan Dubnyk became a member of the rotating Oilers crease from 2009–10 to 2013–14 season which featured names like Nikolai Khabibulin, Ben Scrivens, Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers, and Ilya Bryzgalov. Despite being a member of rebuilding teams with below average defending, Dubnyk managed to leave Edmonton with a 2.88 GAA and .910 save percentage across his five seasons with the team (according to Hockey Reference).
Dubnyk became a bit of a journeyman after he was traded to Nashville Predators, moving to Montreal Canadiens less than two months later. He would sign a one-year contract for the Arizona Coyotes who would trade him to the Minnesota Wild in January 2015, where he settled down and became one of the best goaltenders in the league. He was a consistent starter for the better part of five seasons which included a 1.78 GAA and .936 save percentage in 39 games in 2014–15 campaign with the Wild. That same year, he was awarded Bill Masterton Trophy, finishing third in Vezina Trophy and fourth in Hart Memorial Trophy voting.
Dubnyk would have brief stints with the San Jose Sharks and Colorado Avalanche before ultimately announcing his retirement in 2022.
His first game against the Oilers was as a member of Arizona Coyotes in 2014 where he made 33 saves on 34 shots, helping his team to a 2–1 win.
Chris Pronger
Chris Pronger became a member of the Oilers in time for the 2005–06 season, following a trade from the St. Louis Blues. Despite a short stint with the team, his impact was immediate as he became a member of a club that went on an unexpected deep playoff run which ended in a Game 7 Stanley Cup Finals loss to the Carolina Hurricanes.
Unfortunately for the Oilers’ fanbase, shortly after the playoffs concluded, Pronger requested a trade for personal reasons and his reputation in Edmonton quickly soured. He was moved to the Anaheim Ducks prior to the 2006-07 season where he won the Stanley Cup the same year.
Oilers and Ducks would play each other four times in Pronger’s first campaign in Anaheim, with the latter winning three of the games. This included three assists in a 6–2 win, one assist in a 3–2 OT win in the first return to Edmonton, and zero points in a 4–1 loss and 5–1 win across the other two contests.
Pronger would spend two more seasons with the Ducks before being traded to the Philadelphia Flyers where he would once again play in the Stanley Cup Finals, losing to the Chicago Blackhawks team that would go on to win the first of their three Stanley Cups in five years.
Jesse Puljujarvi
Drafted fourth overall in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft, hopes were high for Jesse Puljujarvi who was coming off a strong World Juniors tournament where he put up 17 points in seven games for Finland as the tournament MVP. After his debut in the 2016–17 season, which included scoring his first NHL goal, his tenure with Edmonton was filled with inconsistencies and included a stint in the Finnish SM-liiga before an eventual return to the Oilers in 2020–21 campaign. Puljujarvi would spend the following one and a half-seasons in Edmonton before being traded to the Carolina Hurricanes during the 2022–23 season.
Puljujarvi would begin the 2023–24 campaign with the Pittsburgh Penguins’ AHL affiliate before signing a two-year deal with the Penguins’ and returning to NHL in February 2024. His first time facing his old squad came this season when the Oilers blanked the Penguins 4–0 with Puljujarvi, like the rest of his teammates, posting blanks on the scoresheet.
Kailer Yamamoto
At the time of his NHL debut in the 2017–18 season, Kailer Yamamoto was coming off an impressive training camp and preseason. He would spend the next three seasons moving between NHL and WHL/AHL before becoming a consistent piece of the Oilers rotation part-way through the 2019–20 campaign where he put up 26 points in 27 games. Unfortunately for Yamamoto, he would not be able to recreate this offensive production in the following three seasons when he would eventually be traded to the Detroit Red Wings in the 2022–23 season.
Yamamoto signed with the Kraken for the 2023–24 season. The division rivals would play each other four times that season, twice in Edmonton and twice in Seattle. Edmonton would go on to win all four of the meetings with Yamamoto being held scoreless across all contests.
Yamamoto signed a one-year contract with the Utah Hockey Club this year, where he has largely found himself playing for their AHL affiliate, the Tucson Roadrunners.
Once an Oiler, always an Oiler
There are so many more Oilers from the past we could have talked about in this article and as we can see, the former players tend to have a variable level of success against their former team. While the performance of the Oilers is truly what matters to its’ fanbase, the famous slogan “Once an Oiler, always an Oiler” reminds us to be grateful to all those who have ever donned the Copper and Blue uniform.
Photo by Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire
