What other moves will the Oilers make this summer?
After an eventful opening day to NHL free agency, the Edmonton Oilers still have some work to do to improve their roster prior to training camp.
The Oilers made some notable moves on July 1, signing forward Mathieu Joseph to add some depth up front, while finding a new No. 1 goaltender in Frederik Andersen. The team also rid itself of Darnell Nurse’s contract, trading him to the San Jose Sharks in exchange for defensemen Shakir Mukhamadullin and Zack Sharp.
However, general manager Stan Bowman has some things he has to address before they drop the puck in the fall.
On Thursday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tom Gazzola from Sports 1440 joined Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton to discuss what the Oilers are going to do between now and the beginning of next season.
Tom Gazzola: I think they probably still want a top-six forward. They have a lot of depth guys…there’s not a lot of onus on young up-and-coming players. You look at that roster right now, and you see Ike Howard up there for the time being, and obviously Matt Savoie, who I think he’s turned into a really strong young NHLer. I don’t think there should be as many questions about him going forward, but they’re not leaning on unproven guys. Samanski, I guess you could throw in there, too; he’s just kind of a placeholder, in my opinion.
There’s a lot of veteran players on this roster, and good teams, contenders, have good NHL players from top to bottom, not guys that are tweeners trying to prove themselves. We’ve seen in the past here in Edmonton, I think Peter Chiarelli was guilty of doing it, leaning too much in 2017 on Jujhar Khaira, Matt Benning, Drake Caggiula and Anton Slepyshev. … I look at this roster, and there’s a lot of depth and solid careers of proven NHL players, so that’s important. If they’re going to add something, they probably want another guy that could play in the top six and not just put like a placeholder in there, somebody trying to find his game at the NHL level, i.e. Ike Howard.
You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…