{"id":293022,"date":"2025-11-15T10:40:30","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T10:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/293022\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T10:40:30","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T10:40:30","slug":"oilers-place-troy-stecher-on-waivers-reassign-isaac-howard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/293022\/","title":{"rendered":"Oilers Place Troy Stecher On Waivers, Reassign Isaac Howard"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Oilers announced<\/a> they\u2019ve placed defenseman\u00a0Troy Stecher<\/a>\u00a0on waivers for the purposes of assignment to AHL Bakersfield. They also demoted rookie\u00a0Isaac Howard<\/a>, sending him directly to Bakersfield.<\/p>\n

Stecher, 31, was acquired from the Coyotes back at the 2024 trade deadline before signing a two-year, $1.575MM extension to remain with Edmonton through this season. An undrafted free agent signing by the Canucks in 2016, Stecher immediately broke into a top-four role with Vancouver but peaked early on, never eclipsing the 24 points he put up in his rookie year.<\/p>\n

The puck-moving blue liner ended up stabilizing as a more useful third-pairing piece, leading to him moving around quite a bit. He was picked up by a contender for added depth at three straight trade deadlines \u2013 going from the Red Wings to the Kings in 2022 and the Coyotes to the Flames in 2023 before returning to Arizona in free agency and being dealt to the Oilers in 2024. Over those three years plus last season in Edmonton, Stecher put together an 8-31\u201337 scoring line with a -6 rating in 230 appearances.<\/p>\n

Those numbers were brought down by a difficult 2024-25 campaign for Stecher in Edmonton, in which he was limited to seven points and a -2 rating in 66 games and averaged just 13:52 of ice time per contest. He was a frequent healthy scratch in the postseason, although for his six-figure cap hit, he wasn\u2019t being paid as much more than veteran insurance. Edmonton\u2019s pickup of\u00a0Jake Walman<\/a>\u00a0at last year\u2019s deadline and the emergence of\u00a0Alec Regula<\/a>\u00a0into a semi-regular role have pushed him further down the depth chart, though.<\/p>\n

Stecher has now been a healthy scratch in seven straight and has only played in six of 19 games this season, going without a point. As a result, Edmonton has been looking<\/a> to find a trade partner for him. With no success so far, they\u2019re letting him hit the wire to see if another team wants his services at an affordable $787,500 cap hit for the remainder of the season.<\/p>\n

Howard\u2019s demotion is more related to\u00a0Zach Hyman<\/a>\u2019s anticipated activation from long-term injured reserve<\/a> tomorrow, but it won\u2019t be the worst thing for his development, either. The 2022 first-round pick is in his first professional season after initially telling the Lightning he wouldn\u2019t sign with them, which ultimately led to Edmonton acquiring his rights over the summer<\/a> and subsequently inking him to his entry-level deal. Howard was left off Edmonton\u2019s opening night roster for cap purposes, but was recalled before they played their first game.<\/p>\n

As a result, Howard has played in all 17 contests for the Oilers but hasn\u2019t been terribly effective. Part of that is because he hasn\u2019t had a chance to play with premier linemates as he may have hoped. There was speculation the 21-year-old lefty might get a trial in top-six minutes alongside either Connor McDavid<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Leon Draisaitl<\/a>, particularly with Hyman sidelined to start the season, but that never came to pass. He\u2019s spent virtually the whole season in fourth-line duties, averaging 9:30 of ice time per game. His production has been limited to two goals and one assist with a -2 rating.<\/p>\n

Howard should receive first-line minutes with Bakersfield. The Wisconsin native had a 2024-25 season for the ages before turning pro, taking home the Hobey Baker Award as the top player in college hockey, as well as a Big Ten championship with Michigan State, while recording a 26-26\u201352 scoring line in 37 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Oilers announced they\u2019ve placed defenseman\u00a0Troy Stecher\u00a0on waivers for the purposes of assignment to AHL Bakersfield. They also…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293023,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[1792,153413,10669,385,99,6182,153414,9818],"class_list":["post-293022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-edmonton-oilers","tag-isaac-howard","tag-newsstand","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-transactions","tag-troy-stecher","tag-waivers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}