Stan Bowman has been in Edmonton for two years now, and until Wednesday, the loudest criticism levelled at him was that he hadn't yet put his own stamp on the roster, that the team he inherited from Ken Holland was still largely the team Holland built, and that the real test of what kind of general manager he was going to be here hadn't arrived yet.
Wednesday was the test.
By the time free agency closed on day one, Nurse was in San Jose without a dollar of salary retained, Ryan Shea was signed, Frederik Andersen was in net, Devon Levi had arrived from Buffalo for a third-round pick, and Kasperi Kapanen, Max Jones, and Mathieu Joseph were all back or added. Zack Sharp, a prospect Bowman said he's tracked since the kid was thirteen, came back in the Nurse deal alongside Shakir Mukhamadullin, a 23-year-old defenceman with size and real NHL upside.
It was a full day. More importantly it was a coherent one.
The Nurse trade had to happen before anything else could, and everyone watching knew the real question was whether Bowman would have to eat two or three million in salary retention just to get a team to the table. He didn't. San Jose had the cap space and the willingness, and Bowman walked away with two assets instead of a cap charge.
"There's a lot of conversations that go into these trades," Bowman said Wednesday.
That's an understatement on a $9.25 million no-movement clause.
Shea is the signing that matters most going forward. Bowman drafted him in Chicago years ago, so this wasn't a panic move once the Nurse space opened. Shea was a deliberate target Bowman had apparently been circling for a while. Shea put up 35 points in 80 games for Pittsburgh last season, kills penalties, moves well enough to play beside Evan Bouchard, and signed for five years at $4 million annually. That number is going to look reasonable for a long time.
Levi for a third-round pick is smart in hindsight. Buffalo needed cap space. Edmonton needed a 24-year-old with multiple strong AHL seasons behind him and somewhere to actually play. Bowman compared him to Brandon Bussi, another goaltender who waited a long time for his NHL opportunity and made something of it when it arrived.
"He just hasn't had much of an opportunity," Bowman said. "It's not that he hasn't performed well."
Andersen on one year at $2.8 million after helping Carolina win the Stanley Cup this spring adds something to a dressing room that no contract number fully captures. Bowman said earlier in the day he hadn't settled on whether to add an experienced goaltender or let Jarry and Levi compete for the crease. He signed Andersen a few hours later. Jarry and Levi are both still in the picture. Now there's a Stanley Cup champion in that room with them.
Kapanen at $2.6 million and Jones at $850,000 keep the bottom six intact without overcommitting. Joseph adds another forward option. The roster has a shape now that it didn't have when the morning started.
The blue line beyond Shea and Bouchard still doesn't look great. Goaltending gets sorted in camp, or it doesn't, and that remains the biggest variable heading into October. There is a real distance between this group and a team that wins four rounds in the spring.
But Bowman came in with a specific list of problems and checked every one of them off on day one, without retaining salary on the hardest contract he had to move and without giving up much of the future to do it.
Two years in, this was his first real stamp on this roster.
It landed well.
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