Edmonton Oilers’ depth at forward is surely the envy of the NHL

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It’s been a whirlwind fortnight for the Edmonton Oilers and their fans. Consider this sequence of events:

• Mon Jun 24: Oilers lose Game 7 of Stanley Cup Finals, 2-1 at Florida. As close to the Grail as is possible without actually getting ahold of it.
• Tue Jun 25: Fly home to Edmonton, their sixth such cross-continental flight in under three weeks.
• Wed Jun 26: Exit interviews for players and coach Kris Knoblauch
• Thu Jun 27: CEO of Hockey Ops Jeff Jackson addresses the media. Tellingly, outgoing GM Ken Holland does not. It is Jackson’s show for now.
• Fri Jun 28: Internal UFAs Calvin Pickard and minor-leaguer Cam Dineen both sign two-year extensions. That night at the NHL Draft, Oilers make a late splash, trading into the first round and selecting versatile forward Sam O’Reilly.
• Sat Jun 29: six more prospects selected at Day 2 of the Draft.
• Sun Jun 30: Oilers waive Jack Campbell for purposes of buying out his contract. Issue qualifying offers to five of seven restricted free agents.
• Mon Jul 01: No fewer than 14 transactions, one player at a time.
  Buyout of Campbell is completed;
  internal free agents Connor Brown, Corey Perry, Troy Stecher, Adam Henrique, Mattias Janmark re-signed;
  minor-leaguers Noah Philp, Noah Hoefenmeyer, James Hamblin re-signed;
  external free agents Viktor Arvidsson, Jeff Skinner, Joshua Brown, Connor Carrick, Collin Delia all signed.
• Tue Jul 02 – Thu Jul 04: pause for breath
• Fri Jul 05: forwards Ryan McLeod and Ty Tullio traded to Buffalo for prospect forward Matt Savoie.

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Aftermath

Jackson revealed two major planks of his off-season plan in a brief interview with Elliotte Friedman just after the completion of Round One of the draft. Just two questions, each with a direct answer that laid out part of the plan.

On O’Reilly and the trade that acquired him:

• “Our staff had him rated quite a bit higher than where he went. Rick [Pracey] felt strongly we were getting a player that would fit our mould. We gotta start getting our pipeline going.”

On Edmonton’s desire to bring back their internal free agents:

• “Nothing imminent; we’re talking to them, obviously because we played so late we’re a bit behind the eight-ball; but we’ve had good discussions with all of the guys who are our own UFAs, and we’re optimistic we’re going to be able to bring all of them back and that’s our hope.”

Missions accomplished. Jackson was right on point with his statement about the pipeline, which has been languishing due to numerous trades of draft picks for rentals, cap retention, salary dumps and more. By moving the 2025 first rounder up a year, the Oilers acquired a solid prospect immediately in O’Reilly. Days later came another major step in this direction with the acquisition of Savoie. From this distance, the newcomers are immediately the top two prospects in the system, a much-needed surge in the “pipeline”.

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As for the internal UFAs, the Oilers weren’t quite able to bring all of them back, but did ink six of them to extensions in short order. All of Henrique, Janmark, Brown, Perry and Pickard saw action in the playoffs; Stecher was on the roster but didn’t play due to a medical issue.

Of the entire group of UFAs, only Warren Foegele, Sam Carrick and Vincent Desharnais changed addresses. In their places came outsiders Arvidsson, Skinner and the big defender Brown. Only the latter can be interpreted as a probable downgrade.

The surprise re-signing of Henrique to a team-friendly two-year deal was, in retrospect, a sign that McLeod was on his way out. Both were qualified to play a similar role, as 3C with the capacity to play wing in the top six. But the budget was too tight for redundancy at $2 million plus. McLeod’s departure potentially opens a spot deeper in the line-up for the likes of Hamblin, Philp or perhaps Lane Perderson at 4C.

But as a through experiment let’s leave those guys in Bakersfield for now and consider just the proven NHL forwards under contract. It’s a deep, experienced and accomplished group.

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This is sorted by regular season games, and makes no accounting for facts like Perry ranking first among active NHLers with 215 playoff games, or that Skinner is tied for last in that same category with 0. As a general rule the rest have a reasonable amount of postseason experience.

By the measure chosen here, 12 of the 13 forwards projected on the 2024-25 season have north of 500 regular season games. League-wide, of the 609 forwards still considered “active” just 166 have reached that milestone, barely five per team.

Young Dylan Holloway absolutely stands out here as the one forward who is still finding his way in the NHL.

The three forwards recently culled from the team are also shown, with all of them clustered near the bottom of the list in the 200-400 GP range. Which is to say all were decently experienced but not to the degree of those retained / re-signed / newly signed.

Let’s re-sort by player age (as of this upcoming Oct 01). We’ll leave the departed players out of the equation entirely this time, as indeed Oilers management has already done.

To call these guys “veterans” is an understatement. Note how Connor McDavid is the second youngest forward among the identified baker’s dozen, Leon Draisaitl the third youngest. Hard to square that with the fact that the two superstars have been core Oilers for a decade; McDavid will enter his tenth season this fall, Draisaitl his eleventh. But they are among just three forwards from the identified group who are under 30 years of age.

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Did I mention this is a very experienced corps of attackers?

Productivity

This time we’ve sorted the group by their average production, using the per-82 rate to define their average season (source: hockey-reference.com). Note the boxcar-type stats shown do not always add perfectly due to rounding, but the “errors” of +/- 1 can be safely ignored.

Simply put, the Oilers have an embarrassment of riches. No fewer than nine forwards have averaged at least 23 goals per season. Eight are north of 50 points, with a ninth (Henrique) hovering just below that threshold.

It’s not merely depth of scoring. The Oilers boast a “height” of scoring at the top end, where McDavid is #1 league wide with a bullet at 125 points per 82. (Minimum 200 GP, a list which currently includes 316 NHL forwards.) Among his competitors only Sid Crosby even makes triple digits, and barely so at 38-63-101. Draisaitl ranks a solid fifth among active players in points per 82, RNH is 51st and all of Perry, Hyman, Skinner, Kane and Arvidsson are packed in the #85-105 range.

8 of the top 105. Now consider that the other 97 are shared among 31 teams, roughly 3 per team at or above that level of production.

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For fun, let’s sort one last time, as a depth chart projecting forward lines based partly on career production rates and partly on recent history within the Oilers.

Fantasy forward lines

Wicked top 9 that is chock-a-block with 20-goal scorers. Pretty decent fourth line, and only young Holloway out of his element on both the experience and productivity fronts.

But wait, the discerning reader might object, surely it’s unrealistic to project an advanced vet like Corey Perry to score at anywhere near his established career rate. It might be a pipe dream for Evander Kane as well, given his recent injury history. The truer question might be, how many of these 500+ GP veterans have already peaked and are on the down slope?

The answer is not many, at least not yet. All of McDavid, Draisaitl, RNH, Hyman and Henrique outscored their career per-82 average in the season just past, while the incoming Arvidsson and Skinner each did so in the preceding season. Beyond Perry and arguably Kane, there’s not a lot of evidence suggesting any of those in the top nine is fading far from established levels.

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The fourth line as shown have certainly had significant erosion, though that is largely due to the depth roles each played within what was already a pretty stacked forward group after being top-nine players for most of their careers. I frankly expect something of an offensive bounceback by both Janmark and Brown next season, even as both continue to project as defence-first types. Ryan is a longer shot to do so, and indeed might be in tough to hang on to an NHL job.

Which brings us back to Dylan Holloway, by far the youngest, least experienced and least productive player in the identified forward corps. Just as we can fairly project Corey Perry outside next year’s top nine, we can reasonably project Holloway to be inside it as indeed he was throughout the 2024 playoffs. Not reasonable to expect him to score like Perry once did, especially given a near-certain lack of powerplay time, but in an 82-game season he’s almost certain to produce far more than his early-career rate. He alone among the entire group is clearly still on the growth phase of his career, and for that reason he projects as a very important player to watch in 2024-25.

The Oilers are not yet a finished product. There remain issues on the back end, and a problem with the salary cap that must be resolved. But it’s hard to dispute that the club has built up a set of forwards that collectively ranks as the best in the NHL.

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