Ken Holland's job of building a champion not getting any easier as his Oilers turn the page on another season

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2023-24 Edmonton Oilers in preview:
GM Ken Holland

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Whether you are among those who would prefer to give Edmonton Oilers GM Ken Holland a B rating or just a berating, one thing most Oil fans can agree on is this: he won’t rate out as an A until he delivers some hardware.

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That didn’t happen in 2022-23, even as Holland did some solid work — summarized here and here — that seemingly had the Oilers loaded for playoff bear.

Didn’t happen, at least not for long enough. So here we are back at the drawing board as the clock winds down on another NHL season. The 3 remaining teams are all about the Stanley Cup, the other 29 already with eyes forward to next year.

Among them, Ken Holland’s Oilers. Having announced his intention to fulfill the final year of his (present) contract, he is back at the beginning of another familiar cycle, which for the most part is a month away: NHL Draft, qualifying offers to RFAs, then the cleansing of the 50-man roster of expired contracts on Jun 30 followed by the availability of free agents the next day. (Note: “Free Agent Frenzy” is finally back to the traditional Canada Day for the first time since 2019), meaning this will be the last of four consecutive compressed off-seasons.)

Let’s touch on a few items on Holland’s to-do list:

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First order of business

There’s just a single item in Holland’s immediate future, the pending expiry on Jun 01 of the club’s rights to prospect Patrik Puistola. The young Finnish winger was acquired as a consolation prize in the deal that offloaded Jesse Puljujarvi to Carolina. It could well be that the decision has already been made and the clock will simply run out. What the Oilers don’t want to do is miss another deadline, as many think they did in losing out on prospect Matej Blumel a couple of Junes back.

Evaluation of roster/needs

In doing a similar roster review back before the trade deadline I took a different approach which proved useful, stratifying the roster by cap hit. Four general classes of players, categories speak for themselves. A few changes since, so let’s revisit.

$10 million class contracts

Bruce McCurdy graphic

  • 3 players, average $10.08 million AAV, 4.0 years average remaining term, 0 free agents.

Inner core group, all signed long term with full No Move Clause. Nobody moving from this group. Note: forwards designated in red, d-men in blue, goalies in green throughout.

$5 million class contracts

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  • 5 players, average $5.35 mil AAV, 4.2 years average remaining term, 0 free agents.

Just a pair of (related) changes here, namely Ekholm in, Tyson Barrie out. Barrie’s was the most moveable contract in this class, and hey lookit, it got moved. This resulted in an increase of $1.5 million on the payroll, locked in for 2 more years than Barrie was. What he doesn’t have is any no-move or no-trade clause.

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Whereas of the other guys on the $10 and $5 million lists, 6 have full no-move clauses, the seventh (Campbell) a substantial no-trade clause. Of the octet, only Ekholm did not sign his contract in Edmonton, which may be a clue about how the Oilers do business.

$3 million class contracts

Bruce McCurdy graphic

  • 3 players, average $2.89 million AAV, 2.0 average years remaining, 0 free agents.

As per the earlier cited post: “Here we get into the soft underbelly of players who might be susceptible to a move. Contract terms are generally shorter and no players have any trade restrictions at all. However, just one of them, Jesse Puljujarvi, has a contract that expires at the end of the current season. An expiring contract is the type most easily disposed of when unloading salary to make room for the incoming.”

…which describes what did happen, as Holland moved out Puljujarvi and (all of) his $3.0 million contract. The addition to this group is unrelated, as Stu Skinner received an extension with a very nice raise from the NHL-minimum $750k he made in 2022-23. While he still comes at a decent price, that is 1 fewer value contract than the Oilers had a year ago.

The other 4 names on the list have a couple things in common:

  • they all have term remaining on their prior multi-year deal, signed in Edmonton in each instance
  • each is well-reimbursed for what he brings, generally on the cusp of or outside the Core 12

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Meaning those contracts aren’t going away by simply expiring, nor will they be simple to trade. The good news from the team’s p.o.v. is there are no restrictive clauses in effect. If the team is to acquire additional cap space, here’s where they are most likely to find some. The club will likely try to offload a couple of them and search for cheaper solutions from within.

Of those, the 2 forwards Kailer Yamamoto and Warren Foegele are the likeliest, as each now has just 1 year left. In Yamamoto’s case, if a trade is not feasible, the club might have to consider the buyout option, which at his young age is just a third of the contract’s remaining value, spread over double the years. In Yamamoto’s case, a “cap savings” of $2.7 million this year at an ammortized cost of just half a million next.

Not saying it will come to this, there may well be a trade out there. Yamamoto is a good player who had a bad year. But the squad will have to consider all options available if the trade offers are underwhelming or come with strings.

$1 million class contracts

Bruce McCurdy graphic rev

  • 11 players, average $0.866 million AAV, average 0.36 years remaining, 7 free agents

7 free agents on the team, and every single 1 of them comes from this class of contract: players close to the bottom level of the pyramid, where there are few savings to be made. I guess the Oilers could move on from Derek Ryan and Mattias Janmark and replace both with minimum-salary guys, but even in that scenario Holland would shave just $1 million off the payroll. Anyone else, and the cost of his replacement would be similar at best. Used to be there was room for a $1.25 or $1.5 or even $2.0 million veteran, but in these days of stratified contracts all of the “extra” dollars seem to get siphoned off towards the top of the roster. The rich get richer, same as it ever was.

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Just 4 contracts with a year left on them, 3 of them defencemen, the other forward prospect Dylan Holloway. Everybody else faces a decision, a negotiation, or even arbitration.

Priority 1

What has flipped on its ear is the growing priority of re-upping Evan Bouchard. He is nominally in the same spot McLeod was a year ago, or Yamamoto the year before that; at the end of his ELC but with no arbitration rights or a lot of bargaining power.

Bouchard established plenty of the latter with a terrific stretch run that just happened to coincide with the Ekholm-Barrie trade. From Mar 01 (Ek’s first game) through the end of the playoffs, Bouch posted a spectacular 9-27-36 in 33 games. Never mind that 23 of those points came on Edmonton’s ridiculous powerplay, which underscores the fact that Bouchard made the unit even more ridiculous than it was already. He’s posting big numbers and he’s going to get paid.

The choices seem clear enough:

  • 1 year-deal on terms favourable to the club, though hardly free
  • 2- or 3-year bridge where the player commands a solid return on his RFA years
  • Long-term deal with a mix of RFA and UFA years at a pretty dear cap hit.

Says here that with cap space so tight, the Oil are likely to take one of the first two options, very likely the first. After all, the performance window they are trying to maximize for the org as a whole is short-to-medium term. Maybe it’s best to have Bouchard at a somewhat cheaper price over the last 3 years of the Connor McDavid contract.

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The rest

Of the others, Ryan McLeod is a lock to be extended, though not at his old price of just $798,000. He has arb rights now and will get a lot higher priority this summer. Fortunately (?) his boxcar stats weren’t particularly special, so his price point shouldn’t be too high just yet. Still, expect a bump into the low 7 figures.

Klim Kostin is another RFA who just garnered arb rights. Like McLeod he has established himself as an NHL-calibre player with quite a few crooked numbers on his stat sheet. Negotiations might prove challenging; Oilers need players such as Kostin, but they need them at an affordable rate.

The older free agents are all unrestricted, though I don’t expect them all to be a month from now. There are 4 of them — Ryan, Janmark, Bjugstad, Devin Shore — and all had a pretty decent season. Of them, only Bjugstad requires a raise from the $450,000 he represented against the cap, while the others can likely be retained at the same or less.

There are also decisions to be reached on other pros “in the system” which are beyond the scope of this post.

Some good news

The Oilers have finally paid out the Andrej Sekera buyout ($1.5 million last year) and Milan Lucic salary retention ($750k), clearing about half of their dead cap. 2 more years remain at nearly $2 million on the James Neal buyout, but at least progress is being made. Those savings are already factored in above.

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Also, the club is finally out from under the Oscar Klefbom and Mike Smith contracts, meaning they might finally be clear of the dreaded LTIR status next season. Which in turn means Holland’s roster choices might attempt to keep the team a little under the cap early in the season to accrue available cap space at the deadline. Under LTIR that simply wasn’t an option.

The Draft

As was the case a year ago with the Kassian divestiture, the biggest news might come in the form of a trade than in any draft pick, of which the Oilers have just 4. Only 1 of those in the top 150 for goodness sakes.

Such is the cost of doing business the Ken Holland way, which largely consists of renting players for picks. At least this time around, Mattias Ekholm is much, much more than a rental.

Bruce McCurdy graphic

Barring further trades, Edmonton has just 4 of 7 picks this year, 5 next, 6 the year following. Indeed, the last time they had a full complement of draft picks was way back in 2017.

Free agency

Much depends on whether the Oilers are successful in moving out one or more contracts in the $3 million range. If not, there won’t be much cap space to offer. In Holland’s own words: “I’m not sure we have the money. It would have to be somebody making peanuts.”

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He won’t be popular saying that, but he’s not wrong. Indeed, CapFriendly — the source for the relevant data in this post — has the Oilers with 17 players currently under contract and just $5.97 million in available cap space to sign as many as 6 more roster players. Now consider that all of Bouchard, McLeod and Kostin can expect a wage bump in 2023-24, and how much is left for The New Guy?

What the Oilers are looking for on the market will largely depend on the choices they make in free agent retention, a subject we will continue to monitor in the weeks ahead. But my general expectation is that the Oilers might do their shopping in the discount aisles, much of it in the second half of July and beyond.

Recently at the Cult of Hockey

STAPLES: Yamamoto’s days with Oil may be numbered

STAPLES: Holland has a winning move this summer. Can you guess what it is?

McCURDY: Rating Ken Holland’s season, Part 2

STAPLES: Holland addresses the road ahead with some flinty facts

McCURDY: Rating Holland’s work from this past season (Part 1)

Follow me on Twitter @BruceMcCurdy

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