The Edmonton Oilers signed Jack Roslovic to a one-year, $1.5-million contract during their season opener.

Roslovic scored 22 goals and 39 points last season with the Carolina Hurricanes. He added 1-3—4 in nine playoffs games. Roslovic was expected to sign a bigger deal in the summer, but it never materialized and he ended up switching agents late in the summer.

Roslovic led the Hurricanes in both 5×5 goals and points with 19 goals and 34 points.

Signing him for only $1.5m seems like a very low risk bet with high potential upside.

GM Stan Bowman spoke to myself and other media people during the second intermission to discuss the signing.

Bowman: Well, we’ve been talking to Jack going back to the summer. And I know he changed agents and I talked to his new agent about a month ago, maybe five weeks ago. We’ve been in touch the whole time and I said the same thing to him then that I did the other day when this picked back up, which was we love the player, but we don’t have a lot of money to spend right now, so if he wants to come here and kind of bet on himself and get a chance to play. We’d love to have him.

And I think he was obviously weighing his options  and came to the decision that this was the place he wanted to be.

He played probably more wing last year. I think he’s played centre in the past. I think kind of in general, we like guys who have that flexibility. He’s a right-handed centre as well, if we choose to use him there.  Ultimately that’ll be up to the coaches, but we think he did a little bit of both last year, probably more wing.

Bowman: We talked about it a couple of weeks ago, the type of player looking at our team that we would be wanting to look for around the trade deadline would be this type of a player exactly. And, you know, he’s available now and he’s a free agent and you can get him signed at a low amount. There’s a lot of things that really worked in our favour. So, instead of waiting to see what was available, we think he could be a nice piece to our group right now. And he’s had a good experience as far as even strength scoring last year.  I think he might’ve led their team in 5×5 points last year.

So, you know, that’s really an important thing. The one thing we’re trying to add to our group is even strength scoring. Obviously our power play has been pretty strong the last few years. We haven’t had as much success scoring when we weren’t on the power play. So, I think that’s something that Jack does really well. We also like his speed. He brings a lot of quickness to his game. He can make plays, play with good players. He’s been an offensive player, and he plays at a high pace. So, I think those qualities fit perfectly with our group here.

Bowman: Yeah, well, we’re going to have to figure that out. We have a few ideas in mind, but we haven’t totally figured that out yet. You know, the biggest thing was this is a really unique opportunity to get a player of his caliber without giving up any assets and have him come right into our team. It fits in salary cap wise. We thought about it like this, that we would be kicking ourselves if we looked back and he went somewhere else, and asking ourselves why didn’t we get him? We have a lot of good players now, but you’re always looking for players who are established, and we think he’s going to be a nice fit.

The Oilers haven’t officially filed the contract with the NHL, but once they do they will have to send remove one player from the active roster. They currently have 23 forwards, eight D-men and two goalies, not to mention they have Mattias Janmark on IR and Zach Hyman on LTIR.

Cap space isn’t an issue because Hyman is on LTIR, so it is just a matter of which player Bowman and the Oilers choose to send to Bakersfield, or trade away. That move will come tomorrow most likely as Roslovic is expected to skate with the team Friday when they return to the ice after an off day.