The Edmonton Oilers had some significant roster turnover this past off-season.
They brought in supposed top-six forwards Jeff Skinner and Viktor Arvidsson while re-signing Corey Perry, Adam Henrique, Mattias Janmark, and Connor Brown. A handful of players also left following the team’s run to the Stanley Cup Final and one of them stands out as a significant loss.
Looking back at who the Oilers kept and lost in the summer
Perry has been beneficial for the Oilers, as the 39-year-old has 15 goals and 23 points in 69 games this season. Janmark and Brown are kind of a “wait and see” type scenario, as both players didn’t have a good regular season in 2023-24 but turned it up in the playoffs. Adam Henrique is fine as a third-line centre and gives the Oilers strong centre depth.
The point of contention is with Arvidsson and Skinner. Arvidsson hasn’t looked great this season as he has just 10 goals and 22 points playing alongside Leon Draisaitl for the majority of the year. It’s a shame, as he had 26 goals and 59 points in 77 games in his last full season.
As for Skinner, he’s been good this season, even if head coach Kris Knoblauch doesn’t believe so, as he has 14 goals and 24 points in 60 games while being a healthy scratch for the majority of it.
While those six players have had varying degrees of success, the Oilers let three players walk and traded one of them. Realistically, all four players have capitalized when given the chance for a larger role, but the Oilers may really regret one of them.
Last season, Warren Foegele scored 20 goals and 41 points, both career highs. Before that, his career-best was 13 goals and 30 points in 68 games, so you could be forgiven if you believed it was just a player playing well in a contract year.
Well, Foegele signed with the Los Angeles Kings, where he has 20 goals and 40 points in 70 games with a team-leading +29. Still, Foegele was a healthy scratch for a few games during the Oilers’ post-season run, so it’s not the biggest loss in the world. Personally, I wanted the Oilers to re-sign him.
Another third-line player who has set career-highs in 2024-25 is Ryan McLeod. He was traded to the Buffalo Sabres on Jul. 5 and has scored 17 goals and 43 points in 67 games. It looks as if McLeod has hit his stride, and while he was always a solid third-line centre with the Oilers, they likely never would’ve gotten this production from him.
It’s also worth noting that he was a trade candidate in 2023-24 to free up some salary cap space. In late November 2023, I wrote an article about how the Oilers gave up on young forwards too quickly, and this could be the case here as well. At least they got Matthew Savoie out of the deal, who is their top prospect.
Later in the off-season, the St. Louis Blues gave an offer sheet to two players: Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg.
Starting with the latter, Broberg was given a two-year, $9.16 million deal worth $4.581 million a season. Broberg got off to a hot start, scoring two goals and 12 points in his first 15 games. In October, I wrote an article about why it was the right decision, which I stand by. An argument against this that I agree with is that both he and Holloway should have never been given an offer sheet in the first place. That was poor roster management.
Since his first game back in Edmonton, Broberg has played 45 games with six goals and 15 points, with four of those points coming in Tuesday’s game against the Montréal Canadiens. The left-shot defenceman cooled off considerably, but getting points for a defenceman isn’t all that matters. He’s a solid defenceman who’s played key minutes for a potentially playoff-bound team. I’d still take Jake Walman over him, though.
And then you have Dylan Holloway. Losing Foegele, McLeod, and Broberg could be seen as a poor decision given their production and role on playoff-bound teams (minus McLeod), but not matching Holloway was one of the dumbest roster decisions I’ve ever seen.
Jun 2, 2015; Tampa, FL, USA; Chicago Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman talks with media during media day the day before the 2015 Stanley Cup Final at Amalie Arena.
Not matching the offer sheet to Holloway was a poor decision
Holloway signed a two-year, $4.581 million deal worth just under $2.3 million a season. In turn, he’s given the Blues 24 goals and 60 points through 73 games, well above the six goals and nine points he had in 38 games for the Oilers last season. Even amid his breakout season in St. Louis, general manager Stan Bowman has doubled down on the decision to let the young forward walk.
“I think they both have had good years in St. Louis, so that’s got a lot of attention saying, ‘Well why wouldn’t we have matched?’ But it really came down to a fundamental salary cap challenge for us,” Bowman said over the weekend when being interviewed on Sportsnet’s After Hours. “We wouldn’t have the team we have now if we would’ve matched either one of those offers. We would’ve had to have gotten rid of a pretty core player. Simply, the math didn’t work. It’s not like we didn’t like the players or didn’t think they could be good players for us, but when you look at the salary cap, that was what we’re studying, was ‘Is there any possible way to match either or both?’“And as I recounted back at the time when we decided not to, we wouldn’t have been able to field a team if we matched either of those offer sheets. We would’ve had to move out a very important player on our team. We didn’t have the flexibility.
The Oilers had a chance to match the offer sheet, as they traded Cody Ceci and his cap hit to the San Jose Sharks. But alas, new Oilers general manager Stan Bowman refused to match the offer sheet and the Oilers received a measly third-round pick for a player on pace for 26 goals and 67 points, yikes.
It’s worth noting that the Oilers also received Paul Fischer and a 2028 third-round pick for future considerations, likely not to match one of the two offer sheets, but it would be nice to have Dylan Holloway in the top six right now.
While the Oilers will end up regretting one or more of these moves, especially if they fail to win the Stanley Cup and are bounced early in the post-season, they can’t make the same mistake with Matthew Savoie’s development. He needs to be given a top-six spot next season and gain chemistry with either Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl.
