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Brett Kulak deserves his flowers for his time with the Oilers
Edmonton Oilers defenceman Brett Kulak
Photo credit: © Sam Navarro-Imagn Images
Ryley Delaney
Dec 13, 2025, 11:00 ESTUpdated: Dec 13, 2025, 11:42 EST
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On Friday morning, the Edmonton Oilers traded Brett Kulak in a package to land Tristan Jarry.
It’s certainly a bittersweet trade. As frustrating as Stuart Skinner was at times, he was still an incredibly likable player who was great at his best, as well as durable. Kulak was a cap casualty and replaced by a similar player in Spencer Stastney, albeit much younger.
When the Oilers acquired Kulak ahead of the 2022 trade deadline, they were on a run of four consecutive years of failing to get out of the first round (or just missing the playoffs outright). By bringing the left-shot defenceman in, they acquired a top-four defenceman, and he went off.
In the final 18 games of the season, Kulak scored two goals and eight points in 18 games and proved to be valuable in the 2022 postseason, picking up five assists in 16 games. Midway through the 2022-23 season, the Oilers acquired Mattias Ekholm, pushing Kulak down to a third pairing role on the team.
Still, he managed to score three goals and 20 points in 82 games that season, with a goal and two points in 12 postseason games. Kulak was paired with seventh-rounder Vincent Desharnais in the 2023-24 season, and managed to score three goals and 16 points in 82 games, along with a goal and eight points in 25 postseason games as the Oilers fell to the Florida Panthers in seven games.
Paired with Ty Emberson in 2024-25, Kulak had a career-best year, scoring seven goals and 25 points in 82 games, with a goal and five points in 22 games. Unfortunately, Kulak began to regress this season, picking up just two assists in 31 games, prompting this move.
The thing is, up until this season, Kulak was always a steady defender. When you heard about him, it was always pretty much positive, rarely did he have a bad game. The left-shot defenceman’s game elevated in the postseason, and he was capable of filling into the top four whenever called upon, even on his off-hand.
To acquire Kulak, the Oilers sent a second-round pick in the 2022 draft to the Montréal Canadiens. With that pick, the Original Six team drafted one of the best young and up-and-coming defencemen in the league, Lane Hutson. Sure, Hutson on this team would be fantastic, but I still think you make that trade because there’s no telling who the Oilers would’ve picked in that draft.
Shortly after the trade, Oilers’ general manager Stan Bowman spoke to the media, noting that the Oilers didn’t want to trade Kulak, but it was the only way to make the money work. In his place, the Oilers acquired Spencer Stastney, a very similar player to Kulak with a cheaper cap hit and six years younger than the former Oiler. The full transcript to Bowman’s answer is below.
“Yeah, Brett Kulak was a great Oiler and was excellent in the playoffs last year, there’s no doubt about that. With where he was and his contract, as far as the last year of his deal, we were able to acquire Stastney, who is six years younger, very similar style of player. The thing we liked about Stastney is his excellent mobility, he’s a great skater, a lot of quickness and has been effective on the penalty kill.
[Stastney] has got some offence to his game as well. We think he hasn’t reached his true potential yet, like he’s 25 years old, so we’ve been able to reshape our defence a bit here in the last year. We now have three guys who are 25 and [Evan] Bouchard is 26. So we’ve got four younger defencemen who are all in their prime years.
I think Stastney is not someone probably a lot of people are too familiar with, but I do think he plays a very similar style to Kulak, and that was important to us as part of this deal.”
Time will tell how these trades pan out, but Kulak deserves his flowers for elevating his game in the playoffs, never missing a game, and jumping up in the lineup whenever asked.
Ryley Delaney is a Nation Network writer for Oilersnation, FlamesNation, and Blue Jays Nation. Follow her on Twitter @Ryley__Delaney.

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