{"id":24182,"date":"2025-07-26T18:34:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T18:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/24182\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T18:34:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T18:34:08","slug":"oilers-looking-to-add-top-six-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/24182\/","title":{"rendered":"Oilers Looking To Add Top-Six Help"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has been an eventful summer for the Oilers as they\u2019ve lost some of their forward depth with Connor Brown<\/a>, Jeff Skinner<\/a>, Viktor Arvidsson<\/a>, and Corey Perry<\/a> all leaving the organization.\u00a0 While they added Andrew Mangiapane<\/a> in free agency, he\u2019s the only acquisition they\u2019ve had with some level of offensive success in the NHL.<\/p>\n

As a result, David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period relayed in a recent appearance on Edmonton Sports Talk (video link<\/a>) that Edmonton is still looking to add some top-six help although he also acknowledged that doing so will be quite difficult.<\/p>\n

As a result of their offseason activity (which included a four-year, $42MM contract for defenseman Evan Bouchard<\/a>), the Oilers only have around $225K of cap space, per PuckPedia<\/a>.\u00a0 Considering the league minimum salary is $775K, that\u2019s not even enough to add a depth player, let alone an impactful one.<\/p>\n

Speculatively, Edmonton\u2019s best bet to add some offensive help might be a one-year, bonus-laden deal which means a player aged 35 or older.\u00a0 Postmedia\u2019s David Staples speculated<\/a> that winger Max Pacioretty<\/a> could fit that bill after coming off a similar contract last season with Toronto.\u00a0 While that means a big chunk of the bonuses would likely roll over to 2026-27, it might allow them to add an extra piece for this season to at least give them some extra offensive depth, though not the top-six addition it appears they\u2019re coveting.<\/p>\n

Edmonton does have a pathway to open up a bit more flexibility on the cap.\u00a0 With the Oilers adding Curtis Lazar<\/a> in free agency, there might not be a top-12 spot for spring signee David Tomasek<\/a>, who inked a one-year, $1.2MM contract back in April.\u00a0 He\u2019s waiver-exempt and $1.15MM of his deal can be cleared with an assignment to the minors.\u00a0 Prospects Matthew Savoie<\/a> and Isaac Howard<\/a> are also waiver-exempt and while they\u2019re projected to be regulars next season, they can be papered down on off-days to bank a bit of extra room; restrictions on paper transactions from the CBA extension don\u2019t kick in until the 2026-27 campaign.<\/p>\n

Moves like that could give the Oilers enough wiggle room to try to make a later-season pickup of a top-six player, providing them a boost for the stretch run.\u00a0 However, that won\u2019t do much of anything to help them at this point of the offseason, making that top-six desire particularly unlikely as things stand.\u00a0 But Edmonton has gotten creative on that front before so it wouldn\u2019t be surprising to see them try to make at least some sort of depth addition in the coming weeks to help replace some of the secondary scoring that they\u2019ve lost this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It has been an eventful summer for the Oilers as they\u2019ve lost some of their forward depth with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,3275,575,85],"class_list":["post-24182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-edmonton-oilers","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}