The Toronto Blue Jays have had a rough season offensively, which continued in Harry Doyle-esque fashion yesterday. Perhaps they should consider offering a tryout to Edmonton Oilers GM Stan Bowman, because he was all hits and no misses last week. As NHL Free Agency opened up on Canada Day, so too did Bowman’s tally of impressive moves.
The lynchpin to all of the moves that followed was the Darnell Nurse trade, which netted them Shakir Mukhamadullin. Another trade and five free-agent signings later, it’s logical to argue that Bowman won July one this year. With so many moves made, we asked you: which one claims the “Best Move” award? Let’s take a look at what you determined.
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The winner, by a landslide, is the Darnell Nurse trade
The hockey community isn’t often united on many fronts. However, as one fan base celebrated, and another saw some of their good draft work undone, 30 other fanbases were already picking a winner. And the unifying topic was the Nurse trade, indeed.
Nearly 80% of respondents anointed this trade the winner of the “Best Move” award, rightfully so. San Jose Sharks GM Mike Grier remembered the saying “Once an Oiler, always an Oiler,” and offered to do Bowman a solid. Bowman not only cleared the entire rest of Nurse’s contract off the Oilers’ books, but retrieved two young defencemen in the process.
Ryan Sharp is still a college prospect, so he likely won’t make a 2026–27 impact. But Mukhamadullin will directly take the roster spot left by Nurse, and as we just found out yesterday, do so for $7.5M less in the next two seasons. That’s some darn good value right there.
Getting all that cap space freed up is a major coup for Bowman. He said he wasn’t going to retain, and bah gawd, he made that happen. The biggest leftover mistake from the Ken Holland era is now erased, and the Oilers are set up well for success next season.
People are excited for the new goalie tandem
The Devon Levi trade and signing of Frederik Andersen both won their own chunk of fans over, especially since neither cost much to acquire. An even one-eighth of fans voted the signing of the reigning Stanley Cup-winning goalie as the best of July 1. Add on the voting faction for Levi, and that amounts to over 16 percent of respondents applauding the goalie moves.
The Oilers have run through about as many goalies in the Ryan Nugent-Hopkins era as the Cleveland Browns have with quarterbacks. It’s a wheel of futility many thought would end with Stuart Skinner. To be fair to him, defence was a foreign concept to this team many times last year. And they couldn’t score sometimes, or get the penalty-kill to click, or use the lineup evenly…
The new plan is a solid one. Andersen, before bowing out in Game three of the Stanley Cup Final due to injury, was having a solid playoffs. Getting the last however many good years of his career, and having that be what Levi learns from, is a perfect succession plan. It’s more fancy than having Skinner learn from Jack Campbell, anyway.
Time will tell if these moves do turn out to be winners. But whether they do or not, one thing is for certain. Anybody who dares continue saying the Oilers are maintaining status quo with the goaltending is purely trolling, and can be ignored.
Will Ryan Shea deliver on his promise?
This was the only one of Bowman’s moves last week that could be considered a “major gamble.”Bowman elected to give Ryan Shea, 29 years old and just now bursting onto the NHL scene, a five-year, $20M contract on July 1. While the $4M AAV is much easier to stomach than the cap hit of either Nurse, or Jake Walman, the term is a pretty long one for sure.
A small portion of voters (4.3%) chose this as the best July one deal though, indicating optimism for it. Shea showed out well in Pittsburgh last season, tallying 35 points across 80 games played and posting strong goals-for and expected goals-for shares. And in the process, helping the Penguins return to the playoffs.
Like with goaltending, nobody can say the Oilers didn’t try to improve the defence. Getting Mukhamadullin and Shea is a really great place to start. And, Sharp may be on the roster in a couple of seasons, who knows.
That’s what made this opening day of Free Agency such a robust one from Bowman. He knew what this teem needed, and he made like gangbusters in addressing those needs directly. This observer suggests Bowman make his theme music “Don’t Miss” by The Blue Stones, since it summarizes his performance last week perfectly.
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