It was quite the week overall for the Edmonton Oilers, between our quiet draft, trades, and free agency. The Oilers lost a few players but were able to add pieces that they needed all on team-friendly signings. All in all, the Oilers are a better team now than they were a few days ago before the draft.
With zero first-round picks, the Oilers had a quiet draft. In the second round, with the 56th pick, they took Beau Akey from the Barrie Colts of the OHL, who is a right-shot, six-foot defenceman that was able to score 47 points in 66 games last season. The Oilers then waited for 128 picks before selecting six-two goaltender Nathaniel Day from the Flint Firebirds. And with their 216th pick, they selected Matt Copponi, who is a 20-year-old forward playing for Merrimack College. So with no first-round selections, it was needless to say that it would be an underwhelming draft for the Oilers.
On Thursday, Ken Holland woke up and decided to break the hearts of Oilersnation girlies everywhere, trading Kailer Yamamoto and Klim Kostin for absolutely nothing. I understand that it was a cap dump, but I feel like the return could have been more than oh, I don’t know… nothing? Like a sixth-round pick or something, but after seeing Detroit’s plans for Yamamoto, it makes sense because the Oilers were going to have to let Klim walk so it seems the deal was essentially, “We will give you Klim’s signing rights, but we’re gonna need you to take Kailer Yamamoto too.” Kind of feels like when you were a kid going to hang out with your friends at the park or something, and your mom says, “You can go but you need to bring your little brother too”.
Drake Caggiula is back, and bless Ken Holland because Peter Ciarelli trading him away was the nail in his coffin for me. At the peak of our depth struggles, Chiarelli traded away our only depth scorer at the time, then sat and looked around wondering why nobody was scoring… wonder why.
I understand Caggiula is not and has never been a stand-out great player, but he will work his ass off to make our bottom six and continue to work to stay there. He isn’t the solution to our bottom 6, but he isn’t going to be the problem either.
The Oilers also signed forward Lane Pederson to a 775k deal as well. He has played 71 NHL games in his career,  scoring 11 points.
The talk of the town right now is Connor Brown, who signed a 775k deal with room to make more in bonuses, betting on himself. And he’s so right for that because you have to bet on yourself (and that way, we can actually afford to pay him). It was discussed on the DFO Free Agency live, but this is an A+ deal by Ken Holland because even if we have to pay Connor Brown every bonus possible, it will count towards next year’s cap, which is expected to increase anyways.
The summer of 775k continued with Ben Gleason and Noel Hoefenmayer being signed to them as well.
Sadly, and I have talked about this before but the time is here now, and I am in mourning.
Oscar Klefbom is no longer an Edmonton Oiler*
*contractually- he will forever be an Oiler in our hearts.
Oh yeah, and as we all suspected, Connor cleaned up nicely at the NHL awards — surprise surprise.
And Stuart Skinner was absolutely snubbed, I have more thoughts on this in a video posted to TikTok. But I think these tweets also sum it up nicely.
Stu, you are a star in my eyes.