Team: 2022-23 Edmonton Oilers

Initial Creation Date: May 7, 2022

Published: May 7, 2022

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

Suffice to say Kaner's been a perfect fit. He's keeping his nose down, ass up, focusing on hockey. Have not heard a SINGLE bad off ice thing about the guy albeit with a small-ish sample size.

The emergence of Bouchard has made Barrie expendable. Choosing to fill that void with a cheap option in Pysyk as he would most likely work well with Woody's 11-7 vs 12-6 deployment (since he can line up either as a RW or RD) as needed to give Broberg enough icetime to develop further in the bigs.

Kulak I believe is having a successful audition and is a welcome addition to the d-corps. He made Barrie viable during his time here, leading me to believe he can cover for a d-partner who is weak-ish defensively. He should mentor Broberg if the kid is playing (as needed basis, see above).

Smith/Skinner as a tandem. They HAVE to play at an even split. Can't risk Smith going down and losing MONTHS of play time yet again. Clearly he is still a viable option especially when primed and locked in. On the other hand, Skinner is much too young to take on more than a 50/50 split, heck it may even be more than he can chew right now as a 1A/1B but there is enough money left over where we can try to grab someone mid-season should one of them go down. Could also grab a cheapish backup. Don't wanna get into a bidding war for Kuemper since we're gunning to keep Kane..

Future outlook.. the next season would feature 18.145M in cap space (assuming the cap goes up by 1M again). Lots of moving parts: Kieth & Smith retirement, Sekera buyout off the books, Lucic retention off the books, only notable UFA would be Ryan (Bakersfield should have a replacement handy by then), only notable RFAs would be Bouchard who would command a huge raise & Skinner, will need a 1A goalie though.

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