With the KHL season officially shutting things down on their season this past Wednesday, players with expiring contracts from the Russian league will be free to sign with NHL teams starting on May 1st.

If you’re looking for any kind of hockey news pertaining to your favourite club, the end of the KHL season could provide exactly that as we’re just over a month away from their free agents being able to sign here in North America. According to TSN’s Pierre LeBrun, the NHL has issued instructions to its teams that they are only able to sign players to contracts that start for the 2020-21 season as the current campaign remains suspended. Captain obvious stuff, right? Then again, I guess the league does have to clarify this point since they do want to resume operations later on in the summer.

So what does this mean for the Oilers? Last week, we learned that the team is interested in possibly bringing back Anton Slepyshev for a second tour of duty, and we may get an answer in terms of whether or not that will happen in just over a month. That said, it will still be difficult for Ken Holland and co to make a decision on a guy like Slepyshev seeing as they likely have no idea what the salary cap will look like for next season. Either way, we could see some updates to the Edmonton Oilers’ depth chart coming up in early May provided that the KHL is a pond they deem worth of fishing in. We shall see.