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Zach Hyman, Viktor Arvidsson Out Another Week Or More

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The Edmonton Oilers won’t have a healthy forward core for the rest of the week. The team’s radio commentator, Bob Stauffer, shared a note from head coach Kris Knoblauch earlier this morning indicating that forwards Zach Hyman and Viktor Arvidsson are still a week or more away from returning.

Hyman has missed the last two games with an undisclosed injury dating back to the Oilers’ recent contest against the Ottawa Senators on November 19th. He’ll now miss his second straight week with Stauffer all but confirming Edmonton won’t have Hyman in the lineup for this weekend’s matchups against the Utah Hockey Club and Colorado Avalanche. It’s salt on the wound for Hyman who’s only mustered three goals and eight points in 20 games this season after scoring 54 goals in 80 games last year.

Arvidsson, who hasn’t played since November 12th, will now miss his third straight week for the Oilers. Edmonton placed him on the injured reserve over a week later on November 21st and he will now miss eight straight games after this weekend’s action. His production and availability are certainly not what the Oilers expected after giving the veteran forward a two-year, $8MM contract this past offseason.

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Oilers Place Viktor Arvidsson On Injured Reserve

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The Oilers placed winger Viktor Arvidsson on IR today, per a team announcement. The placement is retroactive to Nov. 12, so he can be activated at any time. Defenseman Josh Brown was recalled in a corresponding transaction after being sent down to AHL Bakersfield last night.

Arvidsson, 31, has already missed four games with an undisclosed injury and will miss a fifth tonight when Edmonton hosts the Wild. After signing a two-year, $8MM contract in free agency, the 5’9″ Swede has been limited to two goals and three assists for five points in 16 games despite spending most of his time on Leon Draisaitl’s wing.

It’s certainly not the level of production the Oilers expected out of Arvidsson, who had been an effective top-nine piece for the Kings over the past few seasons. Back surgery and a lower-body injury limited him to 18 appearances last season, but he still managed to record six goals and nine assists for 15 points. He was coming off a 26-goal, 59-point campaign the year prior, just two points short of his career-high set with the Predators in the 2016-17 and 2017-18 campaigns.

He’s not the only top-six forward that Edmonton will be down tonight. Zach Hyman will miss the next four to seven days with the undisclosed injury he sustained against the Senators on Tuesday, head coach Kris Knoblauch told Mark Spector of Sportsnet. Neither Arvidsson nor Hyman will return for Saturday’s game against the Rangers, but both could be options when Edmonton returns to action against Utah after Thanksgiving.

As for Brown’s recall, it’s uncertain if he’ll play after suiting up as a seventh defenseman in each of their last two games. The Oilers now have 12 forwards available on the active roster after recalling Drake Caggiula earlier Thursday, and Kasperi Kapanen has joined the team after being claimed off waivers from the Blues earlier in the week.

Brown logged 7 PIMs and averaged 11:29 per game across Edmonton’s back-to-back earlier this week, his first NHL appearance since inking a three-year, $3MM contract over the summer. The 30-year-old landed on waivers before the season started and has spent most of his time in Bakersfield, where he has two assists and a +5 rating in 12 games.

Oilers Recall Drake Caggiula

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The Edmonton Oilers have recalled forward Drake Caggiula to the NHL roster. This move offers insurance after Zach Hyman left Edmonton’s Tuesday night game before the third period. It was Hyman’s 600th NHL game. No update, or indication of Hyman’s availability, has been made since his early exit.

Caggiula will now return to the NHL just a couple weeks after being sent down from his last recall. He’s played in two games with Edmonton this season, recording one assist, two blocks, and three hits in a fourth-line role. That’s fairly typical output from the veteran forward, who’s spent the bulk of the last eight seasons filling the role of depth bruiser. That context has made Caggiula’s fantastic minor-league scoring over the last three seasons all the more surprising. He has nine points, 17 penalty minutes, and a +4 in 11 games with the AHL’s Bakersfield this season, building on the 90 points he scored in 108 AHL games over the last two seasons. This three-year stint is, surprisingly, Caggiula’s first time playing in the minor-leagues – after earning an NHL role immediately after signing as an undrafted college athlete in 2016.

Caggiula’s scoring isn’t likely to translate to the top flight – it hasn’t so far – but any production would be better than what Edmonton’s received from Hyman recently. The reigning 54-goal scorer has just one assist through his last seven games, and eight points in 20 games this season. He’s on pace to finish the year with just 12 goals and 33 points, which would be Hyman’s lowest scoring in a full season since his rookie year of 2016-17. There’s no clear sign as to if Hyman is expected to sit out, or how long he may be shelved, but Edmonton will get to choose between Derek Ryan, Kasperi Kapanen, and Caggiula should a lineup spot open up.

Oilers Send Josh Brown Back To AHL

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The Edmonton Oilers have reportedly reassigned defenceman Josh Brown back to the Bakersfield Condors of the American Hockey League (as per Puck Pedia). The team has confirmed the assignment.

The move comes after the team claimed forward Kasperi Kapanen off waivers yesterday, it was necessary to move Brown off the roster to get back under the salary cap. With Brown now in Bakersfield, Edmonton has just $304K in projected cap space, which would translate to just $1.4MM at the NHL trade deadline, assuming that they don’t make any other roster moves.

Brown was called up on Sunday in the wake of the Darnell Nurse injury and dressed in two games averaging 11:29 in ice time with 7 PIM, three hits and four blocked shots. Brown also had a fight with Zack MacEwen of the Ottawa Senators.

The reassignment for Brown could mean that one of Nurse, Viktor Arvidsson or Zach Hyman is healthy enough to dress tomorrow night against the Minnesota Wild, however, the team still have six defensemen on the roster regardless of whether they get another player back.

Brown has already cleared waivers earlier this year, so he does not require waivers to be sent back down. He was signed to a three-year $3MM contract in the summer and has been collecting an NHL paycheck in the minors. In 12 AHL games with the Condors, Brown has two assists and a +5 rating.

Oilers Claim Kasperi Kapanen Off Waivers From Blues

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The Oilers announced on Tuesday that they’ve claimed winger Kasperi Kapanen off waivers from the Blues.

Kapanen, 28, hit waivers yesterday with St. Louis needing to open a roster spot for Robert Thomas’ activation from injured reserve. He’d been a healthy scratch in three of their last five games since returning from an upper-body injury and had just one goal in 10 games on the season with a -6 rating, so it wasn’t terribly surprising to see the pending unrestricted free agent hit the wire.

The Oilers are hoping Kapanen, who carries a $1MM cap hit, can rediscover the form that landed him 15 goals and 34 points in 66 games split between the Blues and the Penguins in 2022-23. St. Louis nabbed him off the wire amid that campaign, and a good deal of that production came in his final 23 games of the season after the move.

Edmonton has been in need of forward help for the past couple of games, dressing seven defensemen with Viktor Arvidsson out day-to-day with an undisclosed injury. Instead of making a recall up front – they already had to make one on defense after Darnell Nurse was injured in Toronto over the weekend – they’ll opt to bring in some outside help.

It seems unlikely that Kapanen will make it to Ottawa in time for tonight’s game against the Senators, so the Oilers may need to roll with the 11F/7D formation once more if Arvidsson isn’t ready to return. If Arvidsson is still out for a stretch, though, there could be an opportunity for Kapanen to get a brief audition in his usual spot on Leon Draisaitl’s wing. Corey Perry has hopped up into that spot with Arvidsson out, but those minutes aren’t sustainable for the 39-year-old with four points in 19 games.

The Oilers had an open roster spot before claiming Kapanen, so no corresponding transaction is necessary. However, they are now over the $88MM salary cap upper limit and are thus using Evander Kane’s long-term injured reserve placement to stay compliant as PuckPedia breaks down.

Darnell Nurse Out Five To Ten Days, Viktor Arvidsson Still Out

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  • Jack Michaels, the play-by-play commentator for the Edmonton Oilers, confirmed today that defenseman Darnell Nurse is only expected to miss five to 10 days from the illegal check to the head from Toronto Maple Leafs forward Ryan Reaves this past weekend. Thankfully, the Oilers have a five-day break at the beginning of next week which should give Nurse ample time to recover. The Oilers will have a difficult time without him this week should he miss all four games with Edmonton deploying a subpar supporting cast behind Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard.
  • In the same update from Michaels, he shares that the Oilers will also be without forward Viktor Arvidsson tonight. Tonight will mark the third straight game Arvidsson has missed with an undisclosed injury. When healthy, he’s scored two goals and five points in 16 games in his first year with the Oilers organization.

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Oilers Recall Josh Brown

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The Oilers recalled defenseman Josh Brown from AHL Bakersfield on Sunday, according to a team announcement. The club had a pair of open roster spots and ample cap space in their LTIR pool, so no corresponding transaction was necessary.

Recalling Brown gives Edmonton an extra defenseman while Darnell Nurse, who sustained an upper-body injury on a hit from Maple Leafs winger Ryan Reaves on Saturday night that resulted in a five-game suspension, is unavailable. The Oilers haven’t yet issued a timeline for Nurse’s return, but after leaving the game bloodied and in visible pain, it’s likely he’ll miss at least a game or two.

Edmonton signed Brown, 30, to a three-year, $3MM contract over the summer. It hasn’t gone to plan at all, with the 6’5″ righty failing to even make the team out of camp and clearing waivers last month.

Brown’s $1MM cap hit is fully buriable in the minors, but it’s a big chunk of change to be paying an AHLer. The Ontario native hadn’t seen AHL ice since the 2018-19 campaign with the Panthers, the same season he made his NHL debut.

A Florida sixth-round pick in 2013, Brown has recorded 11 goals, 23 assists, 34 points, and a -26 rating in 290 NHL appearances over the past six years with the Panthers, Senators, Bruins, and Coyotes before arriving with the Oilers. He averages less than 15 minutes per game and has consistently posted below-average possession numbers, only controlling 43.8% of shot attempts when on the ice at even strength.

Last year in Arizona, Brown was a frequent healthy scratch but managed a career-high seven assists and 10 points in 51 games when in the lineup. The physical stay-at-home defender did finish fourth on the Coyotes with 85 blocks and sixth with 112 hits, but his 41.0 CF% at even strength was the worst among any Arizona skater with over 20 games played.

In 12 games with Bakersfield, Brown has two assists and leads the team with 46 PIMs and a +5 rating. The former number leads the league, not an unsurprising stat for a player who logged 1.47 PIMs per game with Arizona in 2023-24.

It’s unclear whether Brown will make his Oilers debut on Monday against the Canadiens. That depends on the health of winger Viktor Arvidsson, who’s missed their last two games with an undisclosed injury and has led them to dress 11 forwards and seven defensemen. If Arvidsson can’t play, Brown will likely suit up as the extra blue-liner.

Brown can remain on the Oilers’ roster for up to 30 days or play up to 10 games before requiring waivers again to return to Bakersfield.

Darnell Nurse Leaves Game After Taking Hit To The Head

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In a scary incident from tonight’s game against the Edmonton Oilers and Toronto Maple Leafs, Darnell Nurse was on the receiving end of an illegal check to the head from Ryan Reaves. Reaves was given a five-minute major penalty on the play and was ejected from tonight’s contest.

Nurse was visibly shaken up after the hit and was bleeding from his head. The Oilers quickly announced that Nurse wouldn’t return to tonight’s game. Nurse will likely miss some time which hasn’t happened in his career since the 2021-22 NHL season.

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Viktor Arvidsson Out With Undisclosed Injury

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  • Jason Gregor of Sportsnet 1440 reported that the Edmonton Oilers would be without forward Viktor Arvidsson against the Nashville Predators tonight. Gregor didn’t allude to any injury concerns for Arvidsson but did say he’s expected to play this weekend. Arvidsson has scored two goals and five points through 16 games in his first season in Alberta.

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Oilers Activate Brady Stonehouse From SOIR, Loan To OHL

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  • In more injury news from the Pacific Division, Edmonton Oilers’ reporter Tony Brar shared that Mattias Janmark is considered day-to-day with an undisclosed injury. There won’t be a major shakeup in Edmonton’s roster in Janmark’s absence with the veteran forward averaging under 13 minutes a night on the season.
  • Staying in Edmonton, the organization announced Brady Stonehouse had been activated from the season-opening injured reserve and loaned back to the OHL’s Ottawa 67’s. Stonehouse will begin his fourth season with the 67’s after signing his entry-level contract with the Oilers 13 months ago. In his first three years with OHL Ottawa Stonehouse has collected 75 goals and 136 points in 200 games.

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