‘Twas the night before Free Agent Frenzy…

‘Twas the night before Free Agency Frenzy, when all through the league,

every creature was stirring including in lieu of overfatigue,

the contracts were near done by the GM’s with care,

in hopes that their fans think they’d be fair.

We’re now near 12 hours away from the opening of Free Agent Frenzy opening up Monday morning at 10 a.m. MST.

And boy, is the rumour mill churning.

I thought I’d take a look at some of the rumours as Ken Holland embarks on his first July 1st with the Edmonton Oilers.

If you haven’t heard the news yet, our Cam Lewis broke down the Oilers preparing to sign Mike Smith, while Christian Pagnani wrote about the team buying out Andrej Sekera.

TSN’s Ryan Rishaug reported earlier Sunday the Oilers were out on RW Brett Connolly with 630 CHED’s Bob Stauffer saying he was likely heading to Florida on a four-year deal.

I think this one might be for the best. Connelly is a player who has never jumped out at me and considering he had his best seasons in the league as a pending UFA at 27-years-old, it screams buyer beware.

He likely would’ve fit into the middle-six in Edmonton, which would’ve been fine, but I feared his price tag would’ve been too high for what the Oilers wanted to pay.

It appears, after Connolly met with Edmonton, that was the case.

After dipping out on the Connolly sweepstakes, the Oilers appear to have gone hard after former Anaheim Duck Corey Perry.

I may be in the minority here, but I have lots of time for Perry. Like Connolly would’ve been, I think Perry is a solid option for the Oilers in the middle-six.

There is a chance too that he could slide up to the top line alongside McDavid and Draisaitl. As a prominent goal scorer throughout his career, Perry might be able to hit the fountain of youth with the pair.

He isn’t getting any younger, of course, and is coming off a major injury that led to his eventual buyout.

I’d be wary of signing Perry to anything over a year or two at $2-3-million.

The Sekera buyout opened up some more options for the Oilers, giving them a few million more in cap space to work with. It will be interesting to see how Holland weaponizes it, as it appears he’s already prepared to sign a goaltender for roughly the savings Sekera offered.

It would leave Edmonton with roughly $10-million, according to PuckPedia, to make a few more signings.

Holland has expressed interest in acquiring a top-six winger, while the team still needs to sign a 3rd line centre. Brian Boyle still makes lots of sense to me for that role.

I know it’s crazy, but I would love to see Holland use the space and go out and make an offer sheet. There’s no better time than now with guys like Mitch Marner, Sebastian Aho and Patrik Laine — amongst others — available to be had.

None the less, stay tuned to OilersNation Monday as I’ll be providing coverage of moves all day long.

On Twitter: @zjlaing