Edmonton Oilers player review and 2023-24 preview: Mattias Janmark

Welcome back, Mattias Janmark.

You can file Janmark under a player I was wrong about at the start of last season. I went from being confused about why he was on the Oilers’ roster early in the year, to being much more lukewarm to him later in the season.

While Janmark scored 10 goals and 25 points for the Oilers in his 66 games last year, he was also a player who killed penalties for the team and did so well, at a rate of one percent better than the league average. Yet, still, he wasn’t much more than a fourth-liner in the grand scheme of things.

It’s hard to argue with what he did for the team given some of the offence he contributed in a depth role, but if that’s not there, what exactly is Janmark? His individual contributions to the offensive game are few and far between despite being a plus contributor in the defensive zone. He’s a hard-checking winger who can at least help force opposing offence to the outsides. There’s some inherent value in that.

It appears pending any significant development or change that he’s pencilled in on the Oilers’ fourth line again this season, far from the worst thing. While his ability to kill penalties last year is a plus, it’s something he’s had issues with in the years prior to arriving in Edmonton.

What I’m getting at here is that the Oilers shouldn’t be prioritizing a guy like Janmark in a depth role over someone like Raphael Lavoie, for example, who is a young winger with size, skill and an ability to adapt his game.