{"id":195863,"date":"2025-10-07T21:01:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T21:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/195863\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T21:01:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T21:01:07","slug":"oilers-to-recall-isaac-howard-will-make-nhl-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/195863\/","title":{"rendered":"Oilers To Recall Isaac Howard, Will Make NHL Debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Edmonton Oilers are expected to recall winger Isaac \u2019Ike\u2019 Howard<\/a>\u00a0and award him with his NHL debut in Wednesday\u2019s season opener, per Daniel Nugent-Bowman of The Athletic<\/a>. Howard is the reigning Hobey Baker Award-winner as college hockey\u2019s most valuable player. Howard was traded<\/a> to the Oilers in exchange for center prospect Sam O\u2019Reilly<\/a> in July after not agreeing to terms on an end-of-year contract with the Tampa Bay Lightning last season.<\/p>\n

Howard earned his MVP-recognition while standing as the star on the Big Ten championship-winning Michigan State Spartans. He was a true workhorse in East Lansing, filling the presence of a heavy play-driver, hard-hitter, and leading scorer. Wherever there was play going on, Howard seemed to be involved, and he worked to an impressive 26 goals and 52 points in 37 games as a result. Those marks ranked Howard third in the country in goals, and fifth in points.<\/p>\n

Diligent two-way play has been a core part of Howard\u2019s game since his junior career with the U.S. National Team Development Program. He was the reliable backing behind high-offense teammates Logan Cooley<\/a>, Frank Nazar<\/a>, and Lane Hutson<\/a>. That responsible role helped led the NTDP\u2019s 2004-class in scoring during their U18 season with 82 points in 60 games. He ended up the sixth player from that team to be selected in the draft, though, landing 31st-overall in the 2023 NHL Draft.<\/p>\n

With this move, Edmonton will give Howard a chance to show he can stay an impactful part of the lineup through another jump in competition. He scored one goal and three assists in six preseason games. That tied him with Noah Philp<\/a> (five games played), Darnell Nurse<\/a> (four games), and Connor McDavid<\/a> (three games) for second on the team in preseason scoring. He will battle with Andrew Mangiapane<\/a> and Vasily Podkolzin<\/a> for ice time on the left-wing. Past NHL experience will make that duo easier to trust than the rookie Howard, though the true shape of Edmonton\u2019s lineup will likely come down to performance through the first few games of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Edmonton Oilers are expected to recall winger Isaac \u2019Ike\u2019 Howard\u00a0and award him with his NHL debut in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,453,96438,4247,448,82,4584],"class_list":{"0":"post-195863","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-edmonton-oilers","11":"tag-isaac-howard","12":"tag-newsstand","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-transactions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}