{"id":380938,"date":"2026-01-01T06:07:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T06:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/380938\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T06:07:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T06:07:07","slug":"how-do-the-oilers-get-cap-complaint-when-fully-healthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/380938\/","title":{"rendered":"How do the Oilers get cap complaint when fully healthy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Edmonton Oilers<\/a> have been squeezing the nickel until the beaver squeals, as close to the salary cap ceiling as they can with their current roster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one benefit to the volume of injuries they\u2019ve endured, it\u2019s that the hard salary cap decisions have been delayed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What does Stan Bowman do when Jake Walman ($3.4-million) and Kasperi Kapanen ($1.3-million) are ready to go and their full cap hit counts? Both are listed as day-to-day on Long Term Injured Reserve, and Kapanen took part in his first full practice on Wednesday. They\u2019ll be ready to return sooner than later.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Oilers have $1.812-million in cap space and are projected to be $2.8979-million over the cap at full strength, according to PuckPedia<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They cannot activate Walman until they create the cap space, never mind both. Kapanen can be activated without any major issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tristan Jarry and his current $5.3-million cap hit still count towards the Oilers cap. Unless his injury is prolonged and he\u2019s out for longer than projected, then maybe that\u2019s an avenue using LTIR. But then you\u2019re still without your starting goaltender.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Walman first<\/p>\n

Bear with me, I\u2019m no capologist, nor did I excel in math. To get Walman activated, Max Jones ($1-million) and Riley Stillman ($775K) will need to go down.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So $1.75-million (Jones & Stillman) + $1.812-million (available cap space) = $3.562M in cap space.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s enough to activate Walman, but leaves them two roster players short, and with $187,500 in cap space.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then comes the decision in goal. Despite Calvin Pickard<\/a> playing like Dominik Hasek when his NHL career<\/a> is threatened, Connor Ingram is shining brightly. He\u2019d be my choice to stay up, but Jarry would need to return before Kapanen could in this scenario as the Oilers need to dress two goalies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ingram is $1.15-million to Pickard\u2019s $1-million.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sending Pickard down to Bakersfield makes the available cap space, including their LTIR pool, $1,187,500, but it\u2019s still not enough to finesse Kapanen back in at $1.3-million.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kapanen<\/p>\n

Conversely, activating Kapanen first <\/p>\n

$1.812-million (cap space) \u2013 $1.3-million (Kapanen)\u00a0 = $0.512-million aka $512,500 in cap space with the LTIR pool and -$2,897,919 in actual cap space, which would be needed to bring back Walman.\u00a0Sending down Jones, Pickard and Stillman opens $3,287,500 in space with LTIR pool.<\/p>\n

And those moves still leave them $1.863-million short of being under the cap.<\/p>\n

The rub is that Jarry must return to the lineup before Walman to send down Pickard. Meaning a trade might be in the offing\u2026<\/p>\n

Enter Andrew MangiapaneThe Mangiapane marriage hasn\u2019t been fruitful, leading to speculation his time<\/a> is running out in Edmonton.\u00a0He carries a $3.6-million cap hit. It would behoove the Oilers to deal Mangiapane with no retention for a cheaper and more effective.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But every team wants to trade their ineffective players for cheaper options. Doesn\u2019t mean it will happen though. Or, the Oilers may have to retain money on Mangiapane, or attach a draft pick.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A straight Mangiapane for a draft pick trade seems unlikely given the Oilers, ya know, still want to improve the roster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Oilers could be in a scenario where they ask Mattias Janmark or Adam Henrique to waive their modified no-trade or no-move clauses, cap issues or not, if there are any other desired upgrades Bowman looks to make. But they could just say no.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And truth be told, moving either wouldn\u2019t clear up enough cap space to activate Walman.<\/p>\n

It begs the question: What would you do?\u00a0<\/p>\n

ARTICLE PRESENTED BY bet365<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Edmonton Oilers have been squeezing the nickel until the beaver squeals, as close to the salary cap…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-380938","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-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380938","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=380938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}