During training camp, when people talked about how the Edmonton Oilers needed to go out and add an impact defenseman, I was pretty consistently pushing back on the idea that they could make something like that happen before the start of the season.

First, those kinds of big trades rarely happen that early in the year. Second, there is a higher level of parity in the league this year than there has been in years past.

Just look at the Eastern Conference. At the start of the season, every team in the Atlantic with the exception of the Montreal Canadiens had legit aspirations of being a playoff team and even the Habs weren’t going to sell off legit assets ahead of a season where they were trying to prove that they could take a step forward.

In the Metro, it was more of the same. The only two teams that looked like they could be bottom feeders were the Flyers and the Blue Jackets, but Philadelphia was close to making the playoffs last year and the Blue Jackets were in a similar spot to the Canadiens where they wanted to prove that they could take a step forward.

In the West, the Ducks and Blackhawks are trying to bring in more talent to support their emerging young cores while the Sharks have bottomed out so hard that they really don’t have anything useful to even sell off.

The trade market was dry then and it’s still dry now.

There have been a couple of trades that have happened over the last two weeks with the Red Wings sending Olli Maata to Utah for a 3rd round pick and the Leafs trading Timothy Liljegren to the Sharks for Matt Benning and a pick and some might point to that and say “the Oilers could make a trade if they wanted to” but that’s not really the case.

The Oilers have their sights aimed higher than just bringing in a third-pairing defenseman like Maata or a project like Liljegren.

Are those two defensemen better than some of the players they have right now? Yes and honestly, I do like the upside that comes with Liljegren, but GM Stan Bowman only has some many bullets that he can fire both in terms of cap space and assets.

We’re only a month into the season so the Oilers really haven’t accrued any meaningful cap space, something that will hopefully change by the deadline. Also, as you can see below in the chart from PuckPedia, they don’t have a lot of draft picks that they can move.

Really, I think they could move one of the two mid-round picks they have this season and maybe one or two of the picks they have next season. They also could move their 2026 first-rounder, but that would leave them without a first-round pick until 2027, which isn’t ideal considering the current state of their farm system.

Speaking of that weak system, it’s not like the Oilers have a plethora of prospects that they could move to bolster their current roster.

The point is the Oilers are being forced to be patient both by their own limitations and by the limitations of the market.

The good news is that as the season goes along, some sellers will naturally start to emerge.

Remember the season when they acquired Mattias Ekholm? Well at this point in that season the Predators were playing close to .500 hockey and had dreams of being a playoff team

Right now, the Predators are in a worse spot and if things don’t turn around, maybe they could be surprise sellers. Dante Fabbro anyone?

If the Sabres sell, they could be open to moving Henri Jokiharu. The Islanders have a plethora of defensemen with term, maybe there’s a world where they decide to go the fire sale route. The Blackhawks have Connor Murphy under contract for this year and one more, maybe he becomes available closer to the deadline.

Right now, teams aren’t willing to sell and the Oilers need to trust that the pieces they currently have on the blue line.

They just need to not sink the team and, honestly, to this point, they really haven’t when they’ve been deployed right.

Ty Emberson has experienced more growing pains than I thought he would, but the team has controlled possession when he and Brett Kulak are on the ice. They’re just being tanked by the fact that the Oilers goalies have a .875 save percentage when they’re on the ice.

Stecher and Nurse haven’t been quite as good as I had hoped for and Dermott isn’t exactly doing a lot of good things either.

This first month has proven that the priority for Bowman and company is to find a strong partner for Darnell Nurse. Emberson and Kulak can be a strong third pairing, but the Oilers have a clear hole on the second pairing.

It’s obvious and it has been for over a month now, but the team needs to be patient, which I know is a word that causes a lot of your eyes to roll to the back of your head but they should not be going out and using valuable assets for a bandaid solution.

When they take their swing, they need to hit a home run, not a single or a double.

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