Navigating the salary cap is one of the more important tasks for any GM. Teams that can avoid total cap chaos by walking the tightrope of inking players to deals that match their value (or compensate for future value without breaking the bank) remain successful. Those that don’t see struggles and front office changes.
PHR will look at every NHL team and give a thorough look at their cap situation for the 2023-24 season. This will focus more on players who are regulars on the roster versus those who may find themselves shuttling between the AHL and NHL. All cap figures are courtesy of CapFriendly.
Edmonton Oilers
Current Cap Hit: $83,117,240 (under the $83.5MM Upper Limit)
Entry-Level Contracts
D Philip Broberg (one year, $863K)
F Dylan Holloway (one year, $925K)
Potential Bonuses
Broberg: $850K
Holloway: $650K
Holloway was certainly eased into NHL action last season as he averaged less than ten minutes a game, not necessarily ideal for an offensive-minded player. This year, the early usage is similar but they’re hoping he’ll work his way into a bigger role eventually. As things stand, he’ll be hard-pressed to reach his bonuses and is almost certainly heading for a short-term bridge deal next year that will get him a small raise but not much more.
Broberg is following a similar path as Holloway. He saw semi-regular action with the Oilers last year but in a very limited role with this season following the same trajectory to start. Again, that makes his bonuses unlikely to be reached (which is notable given how tight to the cap they are now) and puts him in line for a low-cost bridge deal as Edmonton has done with several others coming off their entry-level deals recently.
Signed Through 2023-24, Non-Entry-Level
F Connor Brown ($775K, UFA)
D Vincent Desharnais ($762.5K, RFA)
F Adam Erne ($775K, UFA)
F Warren Foegele ($2.75MM, UFA)
F Mattias Janmark ($1MM, UFA)
Potential Bonuses
Brown: $3.225MM
Brown’s contract is the cheapest on paper but will cost them the most as that bonus payout is payable once he gets to ten games played. Barring injury, he’ll get there less than two weeks from now. The pickup was a bit of a gamble since he was coming off ACL surgery but there was definitely an upside play to it. He’ll need to show that he’s healthy and productive to have a shot at commanding that much guaranteed money on a multi-year deal next summer.
Foegele has been a subject of trade speculation for a while thanks to his contract. For a third-liner, it’s not an overpayment but with their cap situation, it has been wondered if it’s a premium they can afford. With the crunch on contracts for depth players in recent years, it’s unlikely there’s a big raise coming his way but a similar-sized multi-year deal should be doable. Janmark cleared waivers last season but wound up playing a regular role most nights but is in that replacement-level range which makes it difficult for him to command much more than this bearing a breakout year. Erne just signed earlier this week on a two-way deal, a sign that his market wasn’t the strongest either.
Desharnais is a late-bloomer but is basically a sixth or seventh defender at this point of his career. His value to Edmonton is the below-minimum contract. As things stand, he might garner enough interest to get close to the $1MM mark next summer but will need to be in the lineup more often than not to have a shot at that.
Signed Through 2024-25
D Evan Bouchard ($3.9MM, RFA)
D Cody Ceci ($3.25MM, UFA)
F Leon Draisaitl ($8.5MM, UFA)
F Ryan McLeod ($2.1MM, RFA)
F Derek Ryan ($900K, UFA)
Technically, Draisaitl is the second-best threat on the Oilers but that certainly doesn’t mean that he’d be a second option elsewhere. On most teams, he’d be their top-line center and their go-to scorer. Edmonton has benefitted significantly with his contract, one that is significantly below market. He has been one of the top scorers in the league in the past decade (second only to his teammate) and between that and the fact he plays a premium position, Draisaitl is in a position to command a record-setting contract on the open market, ahead of the $13.25MM that Auston Matthews received earlier this year from Toronto. However, if he wants to stay in Edmonton, it seems like he might have to settle for a bit less than that.
McLeod is one of the players who had to take the cheap one-year deal coming off his entry-level pact although that swung the leverage hammer to him as he had arbitration rights this summer. He improved on his numbers from 2021-22 despite playing in 14 fewer games which helped him jump past the $2MM mark. If he continues to improve, his value could be closer to $3.5MM next time around. Ryan receiving a two-year deal was a surprise considering he turns 37 in December. If he gets another contract, it’ll be around this price tag while Edmonton will be looking to keep this roster spot as close to the minimum as possible.
Draisaitl shouldn’t be the only big-ticket deal Edmonton will have to contend with in 2025. Bouchard had a breakout second half and a strong playoff performance, making his bridge deal more expensive than the Oilers likely expected. If he continues on that trajectory, he could more than double his current price tag on his next deal. Ceci’s second season with Edmonton wasn’t as good as his first but he still held down a top-four role. As long as that’s the case, they’ll get decent value but history has shown he’s typically better off in the fifth spot on the depth chart which doesn’t help his open-market value which, at this point, is probably close to what he’s making now.
Signed Through 2025-26
D Mattias Ekholm ($6MM, UFA)*
F Evander Kane ($5.125MM, UFA)
D Brett Kulak ($2.75MM, UFA)
F Connor McDavid ($12.5MM, UFA)
G Stuart Skinner ($2.6MM, UFA)
*-Nashville is retaining an additional $250K per season on Ekholm’s contract.
McDavid had held the record for the highest AAV in NHL history until Nathan MacKinnon passed that this year. It certainly feels like it’s only a matter of time before he reclaims that title, potentially passing Draisaitl to re-take the crown. A three-time Hart Trophy winner as NHL MVP, McDavid has led the league in scoring in three straight years and five out of the last seven. He plays a premium position and he’ll only be 29 when his next contract begins. That means a max-term deal (eight years if he re-signs, seven if he was to go elsewhere) is basically a lock. As is the case with Draisaitl, if the two want to stay together in Edmonton, McDavid will also need to leave money on the table to do so given their cap situation.
Kane impressed after joining Edmonton midway through the 2021-22 campaign and was off to a good start last year before being slowed by a lacerated wrist. If he can get back to that level of performance, they’ll do well with this deal but it’s fair to say that he has struggled out of the gate. He’ll be 35 when this deal is up so he might be hard-pressed to beat this contract at that time.
Ekholm has been a steady 30-point defender who logs heavy minutes for basically the better part of the last eight years. He’s not a number one option but a capable number two or a high-end number three. This contract falls in line nicely with either of those two roles, for now at least. He’ll be 36 in the final season so that could be a small concern given his heavy workload. Again, with his age, it’s difficult to see him beating this price on his next contract. Kulak does well in a limited role but while he can handle top-four minutes, he often struggles with the extra workload. That makes this contract a bit on the expensive side and if they need to try to trim more from their payroll, Kulak could be a strong candidate to be the cap casualty.
Most of Skinner’s first full NHL season went quite well. He was an All-Star and it looked like they had an in-house solution to their long-term goalie struggles. The playoffs were another story as he struggled mightily and his first few outings this year haven’t been the greatest. With the current backup market, as long as he’s a league-average option, they’ll get a reasonable return so this contract should hold up relatively well over time.
Signed Through 2026-27 Or Longer
G Jack Campbell ($5MM through 2026-27)
F Zach Hyman ($5.5MM through 2027-28)
F Ryan Nugent-Hopkins ($5.125MM through 2028-29)
D Darnell Nurse ($9.25MM through 2029-30)
Hyman was brought in a couple of years to give Edmonton another top-six threat offensively. He did quite well last season, blowing past his previous career highs across the board on his way to an 83-point season. With five years left, the deal might not look as good at the end but he is giving them plenty of value now. Nugent-Hopkins took a pay cut from his previous deal to sign this one and that decision has paid early dividends so far with the 30-year-old also having a career year last season. As long as he can play a regular role in their top six, this contract should hold up well for the most part.
Nurse’s deal, meanwhile, hasn’t held up as well in the early going. He’s being paid like a number one blueliner but that’s not his best fit as it’s a role he has struggled in at times. Nurse is still a well above-average blueliner but from a value perspective, this contract is certainly on the high side and with Bouchard (and potentially Broberg) likely to get more offensive-minded minutes down the road, it’s possible his production starts to plateau as well.
Campbell was brought in to finally be the goalie that solved Edmonton’s goaltending concerns. However, that didn’t happen as he instead had the worst numbers of his career (and the start this season is even worse). Given how he performed in Toronto, he could still turn it around but if that doesn’t happen, this will be an albatross on their books.
Buyouts
F James Neal ($1.917MM through 2024-25)
Retained Salary Transactions
None
Best Value: Draisaitl
Worst Value: Campbell
Looking Ahead
Don’t expect to hear the term healthy scratch associated with many Edmonton players this season. At best, they can afford to carry one extra skater on their roster. At some point, it wouldn’t be surprising to see them waive that extra player (possibly Erne) in an effort to paper that person down on off days, allowing them to back a bit of extra flexibility which could come in handy later in the season. But generally speaking, they need to match money if they want to make any in-season trades.
There is no big batch of cap space on the horizon either. Brown’s bonuses eat up a good chunk of the expiring contracts on the books so they’ll be quite tight next season and then it’ll be time for a new deal for Draisaitl and McDavid a year later. The core of this team is still quite strong on paper but GM Ken Holland will be hard-pressed to add to it for a while.
Photos courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Watching the Oilers is like watching the movie Groundhog Day. Everybody knows what the problem is, but they shuffle the deck chairs and accomplish the same results. They have a great offense, but their goaltending and defense are always lacking.
Seem that the only way out of their cap space difficulties is to trade a player with an NMC. Kane, Hyman and/or RNH. The have a good group of prospects in the AHL this year, the Oilers should be getting young players up the NHL rotation to move out a big salary or two the coming year and a half. Kulak has been poor this year and a good chunk of last year, but had a good playoff, that would be the first player moved to clear cap and give a young player (Broberg) a route towards moving up the order.