The situation between the Edmonton Oilers and prospect Philip Broberg have reached a boiling point in recent weeks, when an apparent trade request became public.
The public spat resulted in Broberg being sent to the AHL’s Bakersfield Condors, where in eight games, he’s scored one goal and four points while playing big minutes for the team. As our own Bruce Curlock opined over the weekend, how the Oilers have handled Broberg as a prospect has been nothing short of disastrous.
With the player looking to play NHL minutes and the Oilers liking the mix of six rearguards they have, there’s little room for him to wriggle in.
As TSN’s Darren Dreger noted during a Tuesday edition of Insider Trading, the Oilers could look to move Broberg, who has a budding market, to trade Jack Campbell, clearing his $5-million cap hit from their books.
Dreger: Yeah, in a couple of different ways. It remains a curious situation for Philip Broberg, as we know, they’re in win-now mode and he couldn’t get into the lineup at the NHL level. Yet, you look at his [AHL] numbers – he’s playing in Bakersfield and he’s logging between 25 and 27 minutes per game. He wants to get back into the NHL. That’s not likely in Edmonton unless there’s an injury, so trade seems the most likely. But here’s an interesting twist: maybe it’s not just Philip Broberg for an asset coming back to the Edmonton Oilers. Maybe Broberg becomes the sweetener so they can also move Jack Campbell’s contract to free up a little bit of cap space. So, Broberg is a commodity and it seems like that commodity is growing higher day by day.
But for the Oilers, they aren’t the only ones who are in the market for adding a goaltender to their roster. During the same segment, Chris Johnston spoke about other teams looking at options, and how that could heat up after the Holiday roster freeze.
Johnston: And when you mentioned Campbell, you might be sensing a theme here – another team that’s in the market for a goaltender. Edmonton is one of at least four teams that’s keeping tabs in this market. We’ve mentioned Carolina, we’ve mentioned New Jersey. Los Angeles has lost Pheonix Copley and they may be looking for maybe some lower-down depth, but also at that position. As the [NHL] formally moves into its holiday roster freeze here – meaning there’s no trades or waiver activity through December 28th – I’m thinking on the other side of the holidays that the goaltending moves might be something that sparks the trade market because we have a lot of teams looking there. You only have to look at Detroit right now. They had three NHL goalies on their roster entering the week. They were down to one and they were signing Michael Hutchinson after a couple [of] injuries. So, there’s been a lot of carnage in the crease around the league this year.
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Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist. He can be followed on Twitter at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach@thenationnetwork.com.
