The Edmonton Oilers AHL affiliate will be without one of it's best defenders for a couple games.

EDMONTON -- The Edmonton Oilers get another crack at returning to their winning ways against the Detroit Red Wings tomorrow night. Part of how they plan to achieve that is by returning their defense pairings to what they were a few games ago.

This is not a terrible thing - but it has exposed Cody Ceci as the weakest link on the Oilers' blue line.

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Unfortunately the best replacement options for Ceci would be any number of trades, non of which appear impending at this time. Another option could be to call up one of the defenders from the Bakersfield Condors.

That seems fine in theory, but the practice of that would be much more difficult. There are no veteran NHL players on the Condors blue line. Every option for call up is either a top prospect or a career "tweener". 

Arguably the best option would be Philip Broberg. While it's unlikely that he would get promoted to the NHL anytime soon - with recent developments it's definitely not happening any time this week.

According to Daniel Nugent-Bowman of The Athletic, Broberg is going to sit out the next two games for the Condors - with a possible return pegged for Saturday. The cause of the absence is labelled as a 'deep bruise'.

That sounds like the best news possible given the circumstances.

In light of this, we will need to wait even longer for a possible Broberg call up to the Oilers.

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