Oilers send back Skinner, four others

Sunday evening, the Oilers announced the reassignment of five players back to their respective Canadian Hockey League teams.

All five showed well at the Young Stars tournament as per their stat lines listed above in thanks to pointstreak.

With today’s cuts the Oilers are now holding 29 forwards, 18 defencemen and five goaltenders at camp. Following Monday night’s split-squad game I would imagine the team will cut down the roster with six pre-season games to follow.

Skinner and Wells will be heading back to their squads and are expected to be key-cogs in both their teams plans as starting goaltenders.

I’m intrigued to see how many players the team hold up to what point in the pre-season. Through my eyes when the team was in the Eakins era, the Oilers seemed to hold onto too man too long into the pre-season – it’s something I think held the team back out of the gate due to the actual lines not having as much time to gel.

The McLellan era has been different as I have seen him play common lines – or pairs of players – as soon as possible.

With Samorukov recently signing his entry level contract, the first year of his deal will slide with today’s reassignment. The Nation Network’s J.D. Burke gave a great look at him a week ago.

The Oilers have two junior eligible players left on their roster in Kailer Yamamoto and Tyler Benson who will likely be reassigned to the WHL at some point in the next two weeks.