All the Oilers news is happening at once! The Edmonton Oilers have just placed Kris Russell onto the Injury Reserve, and have assigned Ethan Bear to the Bakersfield Condors. 

As the NHL season is set to kick-off tomorrow, the Oilers are filing the last few moves needed to have their roster set. Ethan Bear has already traveled with the team to Europe, so these are all strictly paper transactions. Technically, I don’t think it means that Evan Bouchard has earned the spot over Ethan Bear, but it’s a fairly good indication of what’s to come. I personally think the Oilers will give Bouchard his nine games in the NHL with Bear beginning the season in the AHL. If Bouchard is decided as a no-go for the season, Bear would be brought up to fill his spot.

With the signing of Jason Garrison this morning, the Oilers now have two extra defencemen on their roster. Placing Kris Russell on the IR and sending down Bear is the only right move. In case you missed it, Russell was banged up in a preseason game but is expected to play on Saturday. It makes sense to place him on the IR for the time being, but I expect him to be taken off for Saturday and have another transaction made between now and then as well.

It’s a bit of an odd week as the team still has one preseason game left to play tomorrow, while the rest of the NHL is beginning their regular season. I wouldn’t really panic over any of these transactions as they’re all contractual mumbo-jumbo in my opinion. I’ll only start to think long and hard about the roster until I see who’s playing in Sweden on October 6th.

As per good media guy, Reid Wilkens, the Oilers have just placed Andrej Sekera on the LTIR and have recalled Ethan Bear back to the team. Confusing, amirite?

I was expecting this to happen tomorrow but this makes sense too. So now the speculation begins… will Kris Russell be activated before Saturday and then Ethan Bear gets sent down AGAIN? What do you guys think? Here is the tweet from the Oilers claiming that Russell is hopefully expected to play for Saturdays game.