Why accruing $21 million in cap space isn’t realistic for the Oilers
Between there being no fun Oilers news to discuss, baseball not fulfilling any of my sports fandom needs, and the historic amounts of rain killing a good chunk of our prime golf season… it hasn’t been a great summer for me so far!
One topic that is still getting people going online is the Oilers’ current amount of cap space.
In theory, that’s a good idea, but there are some big flaws with that thinking.
Oilers don’t have the assets to use that much cap space
First off, even if the season were to go perfectly and they had north of $20 million in available space at the deadline, which players would they even use that money on?
The team doesn’t have the assets to acquire $21 million worth of quality players. Could they go out and take on some bad contracts like Jonathan Huberdeau’s in Calgary? I guess they could, but I’m not sure I see the logic in a move like that.
On top of that, there are the new playoff salary cap rules that came into effect last season, meaning that even if the Oilers acquired north of $20 million in players, they wouldn’t be able to fit them into their game-day cap picture in the playoffs.
It would be essentially pointless.
If the Oilers could accrue around $8 million in cap space, then I could get behind that. That would be enough to go out and potentially acquire a premier rental, like maybe Red Wings forward Alex DeBrincat, and actually fit them into their playoff cap picture.
Could Vladimir Tarasenko or Michael Bunting fit Edmonton’s roster?
Tarasenko would be a very intriguing fit because of the offensive upside. I would love to see the Oilers find a way to add a strong five-on-five scorer, and when looking at potential fits in their top six, it’s important to take out power play production because there really isn’t a lot of power play time to go around in Edmonton.
Tarasenko scored a total of 16 goals at five-on-five last season, and over the last three seasons, he’s averaged 14 five-on-five goals per year. That number would’ve ranked him sixth on the Oilers last season.
He’s also a durable player, appearing in over 75 games in four of the last five seasons.
Even if you need to overpay a little bit in order to keep the term to one year, it would be a win for the Oilers.
Let’s say they bring in a player making $3.5 million for next season and send down Stastney. In that scenario, they would still have around $2.4 million in cap space, and that would accrue to just under $10 million by the trade deadline if everything went according to plan.
They could also send down Mattias Janmark and free up another $1.2 million if they needed to.
I am not against the idea of saving some cap space for the deadline, but they don’t need to accrue the amount that they currently have.
They should still be open to the idea of adding another forward to the mix. Even if it doesn’t work out, it won’t hurt their chances of adding a player later down the line.
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