The trade deadline has come and gone and it looks like the Oilers are standing pat with their moves with Walman, Jones, and Frederic as the key additions to this lineup. Looking around the NHL I would give Bowman and the Oilers a B grade for their deadline.

A few key issues for the Oilers this season have been lacking one more top 4 defender, a lack of a real identity to a bottom six group that hasn't scored or done much away from the puck, and some more scoring talent. They check those boxes in the players that they added and in Walman, have a player signed for more than just this season. Considering the prices of some of the rentals this season (Beauvillier for a 2nd is wow) I think the Oilers managed their assets well.

The issue is two other key areas that were arguably more concerning for the Oilers were not addressed. Frederic could see time with Draisaitl but isn't a true top six scoring winger on his own. Neither Skinner nor Arvidsson has been nearly good enough and the Oilers still lack true scoring outside of three or four main players.

The other main concern going into the deadline was goaltending. Stuart Skinner at his best absolutely has the ability to be a #1 starter and good enough to get this team to the Stanley Cup Finals last season. His issues are consistency and this year in particular his ups and downs have been more dramatic. The backup Calvin Pickard is more of a #3 for an organization and lacks the veteran skill or experience to truly push Skinner for the #1 spot. This team may very well live or die by the glove of Stuart Skinner.

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One easy habit to get into after a trade deadline is to look around at other trades that were made and argue why your team wasn't in on them. For the most part I don't see any trades made that I wish the Oilers made.

Rantanen is the obvious one but looking at the package that the Stars gave up I don't think Edmonton had the assets to come close to matching. The only players of value the Oilers could have really offered would have been Matt Savoie or Sam O'Reilly and neither moves the needle like Stankoven, a proven player right now.

The only other one the obviously stings is Marchand to the Panthers. At the time of writing this we don't yet know what the return was from Florida but that is a nasty piece of work from the previous Cup winners.

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One quick update, the Oilers just announced that Evander Kane will not return for the remainder of the regular season. Maybe Kane will be ready for the playoffs and maybe he won't be but the entire Kane situation has been bizarre to follow for the Oilers and one has to wonder what other moves Edmonton could have made if they had made use of his LTIR status earlier.

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Frederic remains on LTIR but will be activated within the next couple weeks. For the Oilers, this is the type of lineup I would like to see:


Skinner-McDavid-Hyman
Frederic-Draisaitl-Savoie
Arvidsson-RNH-Brown
Jones-Henrique-Perry

Kapanen, Podkolzin, Janmark as extras

Ekholm-Bouchard
Nurse-Kulak
Walman-Emberson

I would like to see the Oilers utilize their centre depth and run McDavid, Draisaitl, RNH, and Henrique down the middle. For the defense, Kulak stays on the right with Nurse where he has had success but Walman and Emberson can take up more minutes and take pressure off the other two pairings.

We likely won't get a full sense of all this until Frederic is back. For now I think the Oilers made good moves but still have to question whether or not they have done enough to compete with the arms races that went on around them.

Thanks for reading.

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