The Edmonton Oilers are all-in, but their trades have been lateral moves at best, and they spent another first-round pick in the process, writes Eric Cruikshank.
There was a clear message of urgency that Connor McDavid sent to the Edmonton Oilers when he signed his two-year extension back in October.
With seven trades involving 13 players and five draft picks since July 1, 2025, it's clear that GM Stan Bowman has attempted to build on that urgency, but his efforts have not resulted in progress.
Previous regular seasons have been filled with highs and lows in Edmonton, but this iteration of Oilers hockey has inspired the least amount of confidence at all three positions in a while.
The most puzzling situation has been the handling of the goaltending position.
There's a world where Tristan Jarry, after a disastrous 2024-25 campaign, could be a worthwhile low-risk acquisition to work in tandem with Stuart Skinner. After all, he had a respectable 2.66 goals-against average and .909 save percentage in 14 games with Pittsburgh before the trade.
However, asking Jarry to outperform Skinner was never going to be an investment that paid off. So far, his stats aren't better than what Skinner had.
Skinner had an .891 SP and 2.83 GAA in 23 games with the Oilers before the trade. Jarry has an .864 SP and 3.85 GAA in 12 games since the trade.
Additionally, the trade that sent Skinner to the Pittsburgh Penguins included one of the Oilers' best defensive defenders in Brett Kulak, who has since been flipped by Penguins GM Kyle Dubas to the Colorado Avalanche.
With the Oilers having the seventh-most goals against per game in the league, acquiring Connor Murphy from the Chicago Blackhawks would, once again, be looked at as a great addition to a defensive lineup that already had a player like Brett Kulak in it, not one or the other.
The biggest hole in their lineup was their third-line center position, and the recent acquisition of Jason Dickinson from the Blackhawks will presumably fill that gap. However, that came at an incredibly high cost of a top-12 protected 2027 first-round pick, likely for the Blackhawks' troubles of taking on Andrew Mangiapane's $3.6-million cap hit for the next year while also getting Dickinson at 50 percent retained.
Dickinson is a fine, defensively sound center, but this doesn't look great for the Oilers when considering the Vancouver Canucks gave the Blackhawks a second-round pick just to take him off their hands back in 2022. Dickinson had a career-high 35 points two seasons ago, but he's at 13 points in 47 games this season.
It feels like Bowman hasn't made a big enough swing. Some of these additions and subtractions, at best, can be described as lateral moves, and the team is now left without a first-round pick over the next two seasons without acquiring a true top-level talent to show for it, along with just $475,000 in cap space to work with.
The decisions that Bowman has made up until this point will ultimately be dictated on the team's playoff success. But the on-ice results and the changes made up until this point would suggest they are far from the Stanley Cup contenders they've been in previous seasons.
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