Quoting: upsideofafaceplant
Fair point to all aside from re-signing Kane. Imo that's something you regret in two years, unless he's willing to sign for 4mil or less. That's probably not happening.
Goaltending I'd see as an overpay as well, but there really aren't many viable options available in free agency or via trade. Sure, you could try Fleury or Holtby or something, but they're probably not coming here. Husso is a gamble for sure, but if you look at it as him only making 500k more than Koskinen it might be more stomacheable.
As for the defence, I wrote that I was trying to be realistic...don't see Holland doing anything major like a Chychrun trade, and free agency isn't deep this season. Plus no cap space and so on. I'd argue there are improvements, Kulak is better than anybody we currently have on the depth-chart, and Benning is much more suited for shutdown 3rd-pairing duty than Barrie. Most of the signings are basically stopgaps until Bouchard is properly ready for top-pairing duty, Broberg is ripe and another D-prospect can take over bottom-pairing duty.
Agreed about the goaltending. The situation looks grim. Fluery definitely wont sign in edmonton, and they dont have the cap space to take a run at Kuemper. I would rather Holland use that $5mill for Husso to get a good shutdown dman on the right side instead of a 5 yr gamble on an unproven goalie.
I wonder if there might be a trade out there, for say like Reimer from the sharks.... he has one more yr left so that could serve as a buffer to see what they have with Skinner up full time and maybe starting every 3rd game, also bridges the gap to the 2023/24 season when they have a bit more cap space to go out and pay a #1 if it doesnt look like Skinner is gonna be the guy....
I think if they can get Kane to agree to a 3 yr term they should do it... I doubt any other teams in the league will be offering more term than 2 or 3 yrs considering his history. It will be the dollar value offered that the Oilers will have a hard time competing with when it comes to getting him resigned. But with Kassian surely getting traded, bought out, fired to the moon, and not being able to resign Kane, this team will be hard up for some muscle.