The Oilers don’t have a lot of financial flexibility right now. Per CapFriendly, they have around $5.6MM in room at the moment but with defenseman Evan Bouchard and center Ryan McLeod both needing new deals, that might not be enough. To that end, Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli suggested (audio link) that Edmonton might have been the biggest losers from the Philipp Kurashev arbitration award, one that saw the Chicago forward get $2.25MM per season. Seravalli believes that the Oilers were likely hoping to get McLeod’s deal done for a little less than $2MM but that might be hard to do now. McLeod (11 goals, 12 assists in 57 games) is coming off a better platform year than Kurashev (nine goals, 16 assists in 70 contests) so if his case gets to a hearing, it’s safe to say they’ll be using the Kurashev contract as a comparable.
More from the West:
- The Wild are hoping to get defenseman Calen Addison signed for just above the league minimum, Joe Smith and Shayna Goldman of The Athletic note (subscription link). Minnesota tendered him a qualifying offer of $787,500 and it would appear that they’re holding firm to that offer for now. They have around $5.93MM of cap room per CapFriendly with the bulk of that earmarked for goaltender Filip Gustavsson whose arbitration hearing is scheduled next Friday. By pushing for Addison to take a one-year agreement, GM Bill Guerin is hoping to have enough cap space left over after Gustavsson gets his new deal to allow them to have a reasonable-sized cushion for in-season movement.
- Kraken defenseman Vince Dunn met with the media today including Geoff Baker of The Seattle Times following his four-year, $29.4MM contract from last week. The medium-term agreement raised some eyebrows and Dunn acknowledged that a factor was the possibility to try to land another sizable deal when he’s 30 in what should be a bigger salary cap environment. Dunn did make it clear that he has no desire to leave Seattle when his contract expires in the 2027 offseason.