After all, they have few opportunities to draft such players, given their late-round picks \u2014 if they have any at all. Such is life for a team who\u2019s Cup or bust every year.<\/p>\n
While Matt Savoie<\/a> graduated out of\u00a0Daily Faceoff\u2019s Steven Ellis\u2019 top 75 NHL-affiliated prospects list<\/a>, one Oilers prospect fell off the list entirely: Isaac Howard<\/a>. Listed No. 59 on Ellis\u2019 2025 list, the winger was spoken highly of coming off a Hobey Baker Award as the top college hockey player, while also winning a World Championship gold with the USA.<\/p>\n Howard\u2019s drop off the list isn\u2019t so much about him as a prospect, more so about the next emerging crop of players, Ellis told me.<\/p>\n \u201cHoward dropping off the list didn\u2019t necessarily mean he massively fell as a prospect and more that there were just a bunch of other players who joined the market through the most recent draft, among other reasons,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Howard had a good season last year after turning pro. Acquired in exchange for Sam O\u2019Reilly, Howard started the year with the Oilers and would go on to play 29 games, scoring two goals and five points. While he struggled to adapt his game quickly to the NHL, he would find much more success with the AHL\u2019s Bakersfield Condors.<\/p>\n Across 47 minor league games, he would rack up 24 goals and 50 points, finishing third in goals among rookies, and fourth in points.<\/p>\n But still, there\u2019s more room for the 22-year-old.<\/p>\n \u201cThe big thing about his game is that it still feels like he lacks a true \u2018B\u2019 game,\u201d said Ellis. \u201cScouts have always viewed him as an offensive player or bust. When discussing his game throughout the past year, many evaluators were concerned that if he\u2019s not in a top-six scoring role, he\u2019s not going to be a high-end producer.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that\u2019s typically the pathway forward for most players who win the Hobey Baker in an upperclassman year. If you look at the history of players who won the award in their third or fourth season, most of them never became impact NHLers. That could still change here, because I still see a pathway for him becoming a top-six goal-scorer. But he\u2019s kind of at that point where he isn\u2019t adding really new elements to his game, and what you see is what you get.\u201d<\/p>\n The Sam O\u2019Reilly comparison<\/p>\n Much noise has been made about O\u2019Reilly in the Edmonton market after a strong 2025-26 campaign in which he totalled 29 goals and 72 points in 56 games between the London Knights and Kitchener Rangers. An impressive six goals and eight points in seven games with the bronze medal world junior team helped, too.<\/p>\n It was all exacerbated when, with the Rangers, he scored 17 goals and 28 points in 18 playoff games, helping the team win a league championship and earning playoff MVP honours.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019ll often get compared to Sam O\u2019Reilly because of the trade, but there was a reason that deal was made,\u201d said Ellis. \u201cThe Oilers needed somebody who, in theory, would be closer to making the NHL, and Howard did that this past season, albeit to mixed results.<\/p>\n \u201cMy stance on him was that he should have always spent the first half of the year in the AHL getting comfortable playing pro hockey. But the reason I bring up O\u2019Reilly here is because he has a clearer path to a third-line role where he serves as the ultimate two-way centre. He can play with talented forwards, but I think what we saw from him at the World Juniors is more what we\u2019re going to see from him in the NHL. I don\u2019t see him as a top six forward, but I see him as a guy who could still put up decent production while being defensively responsible. Howard, however, isn\u2019t as good physically and isn\u2019t defensively dominant, which limits his potential.<\/p>\n That being said, he was the 77th-ranked prospect on my list. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a huge range from 60 to 77.\u201d<\/p>\n Howard is expected to make the Oilers roster out of training camp, and could even have an early look in the top-six in the wake of Savoie\u2019s injury<\/a>.Zach Laing is Daily Faceoff Edmonton\u2019s managing editor and The Nation Network\u2019s news director. He can be followed on X at @zjlaing<\/a>, or reached by email at zach.laing@bettercollective.com.The Future is Daily Faceoff Edmonton The future of hockey coverage is bigger than one team, one market, or one platform. By bringing our local hockey brands together under Daily Faceoff, we\u2019re creating a more complete hockey experience \u2014 one that gives fans the best of local passion and league-wide expertise, all in one place. The community remains at the centre. The experience is simply expanding as part of\u00a0the next evolution of how we cover the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n Welcome to Daily Faceoff Edmonton \u2014 Driven by hockey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Offensive player or bust\u2019: Steven Ellis breaks down Isaac Howard\u2019s drop off Daily Faceoff\u2019s prospect list When it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":881598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-881597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881597","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=881597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/881598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Rebrand-2026-General-Article-Insert-727x404-1.png\")
<\/p>\n