Edmonton Oilers turn to Plans B, C and D to address winger issues

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When Edmonton Oilers made their play on the free agent market this past Jul 01, upgrading the winger positions was a major priority. With centre-winger Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and full-timer winger Zach Hyman established alongside Connor McDavid on a productive first line (and first powerplay unit), the play was to provide some scoring help flanking Leon Draisaitl on the second line that seemed likely to be missing Evander Kane for the start of the 2024-25 season.

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Plan A

To that end, Interim GM Jeff Jackson made a big splash by signing RW Viktor Arvidsson and LW Jeff Skinner. That same day, he brought back bottom six wingers Mattias Janmark, Corey Perry and Connor Brown , seemingly leaving the Oilers flush on the flanks. Established veterans wherever you looked.

At least, that was the plan. Today’s reality is not so rosy.

Let’s start with the injured list, updated by Kris Knoblauch on Monday when the coach stated that despite the current five-day break in the schedule, neither Hyman nor Arvidsson would be ready to play this upcoming weekend in Utah and Colorado.

Arvidsson has already missed six games due to his undisclosed health issue, Hyman two. Kane, meanwhile, has yet to play a game this season, and isn’t expected to for about three more months.

Said trio ranks 1-2-3 among full-time wingers on the Oilers salary cap ledger. That’s going to leave a hole.

Sad fact of the matter was that both Hyman and Arvidsson were producing at far below expected levels when healthy. And they are far from alone. Consider the case of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, sputtering along with just 2 goals through 22 games. He’s nominally a centre who still gets occasional deployment at that position, but who has gradually migrated to the wing position in recent years. For the rest of this discussion we’ll consider him a winger, designating McDavid, Draisaitl, Adam Henrique and Derek Ryan as the pivots.

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Leaving this group of (primarily) wingers, listed here in order of cap hit.

Lots of experience there, but precious little production. After 22 games, nobody with as many as 5 goals, and a mere 20 tallies among the lot of them. Just two plus players. A single guy (Perry) with a shooting percentage in the double digits. Skinner leading the group in shots, but not a lot of finish and a big red number on the plus/minus front.

With Kane, Hyman and Arvidsson all out and RNH and Skinner continuing to shoot blank, there’;s not a lot resembling top-six production at the moment. Thankfully, there are a couple of bright-ish spots in the bottom half of the list. Several of them stepped up with fine perfomances when the Oilers produced their best home-ice performance of the season on Saturday, a 6-2 win over New York Rangers.

Janmark had a terrific game, skating miles and carrying the puck with authority. He earned a pair of primary assists with splendid passes to Darnell Nurse and Evan Bouchard, with both rearguards burying a clean look from the high slot. In between times, Janmark drew a penalty that quickly put an end to an Oilers penalty kill and enabled a 4-on-4 situation in which Draisaitl and McDavid combined for what eventually stood as the game winner.

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Pushed into the top six to fill one of the holes, Brown fired 4 shots on net, earned a couple of secondary assists and teamed up with Janmark to excel on the penalty kill.

Plan B

A couple of more recent additions to the team also made an impact. Triggered by the impending departure of Dylan Holloway to a hostile offer sheet in mid-August, new GM Stan Bowman made his first acquisition, snagging left winger Vasily Podkolzin from Vancouver for a fourth round pick. Podkolzin had already signed a two-year extension for $1.0 million per, less than half of what had enticed Holloway to sign with the Blues.

He’d already won plenty of fans in his new home with his energetic play, by far Edmonton’s most physical forward in the ongoing absence of Kane. His 52 hits lead the corps by a wide margin, with no other attacker having as many as 20 to this point. He picked up a handful of assists along the way, mostly bu digging pucks out and feeding them to Draisaitl, but had failed to score a goal. That drought extended back nearly two calendar years (41 NHL games), and no doubt was a contributing factor in Vancouver’s decision to let the former #10 overall draft pick go.

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That drought finally came to an end against the Rangers.

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Once again, Podkolzin followed his game plan of getting the puck to Draisaitl and heading for the net. When Leon returned the disc to him in the slot, Podz slammed a one-timer that rocketed over Jonathan Quick’s shoulder, pinged the crossbar and dropped into the net. The relief was palpable, on his face and in his body language. His first goal as an Oiler. Long time coming, and certainly well-deserved based on his ever-improving play.

Plan C

Another guy who notched his first as an Oiler, in this case his first point, was the most recent addition. With both of his top-six RWs on the shelf, Bowman went shopping on the waiver wire last week, claiming Kasperi Kapanen from St. Louis. Like Podkolzin, he has a $1.0 million cap hit, though just for the current season. According to Knoblauch, the Oilers had pursued the idea of signing Kapanen last summer and were familiar with the player.

Himself a former first-round pick with nearly 500 games of NHL experience, the 28-year-old quickly found himself in the cherished position of 1RW, filling in for Hyman on McDavid’s flank. He made the most of the opportunity with a nifty assist on McDavid’s first of two goals of the night.

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A gorgeous three-way passing play, sparked by Kapanen who attacked on the rush, took the puck behind the net, circled in the left wing corner and found Bouchard with a gorgeous diagonal pass. Bouch quickly snapped a return cross-ice feed to McDavid, lurking at the edge of the crease. Bam! 5-1, and any thoughts of a Rangers comeback were extinguished.

Not saying he is “that guy”, but on this particular sequence Kapanen reminded this observer of the splendid Ales Hemsky, who made any number of great passes circling out of the left-wing corner on plays very similar to this one. Watch the clip above and it’s not hard at all to visualize Hemsky making that initial rush and pass.

What we can say about Kapanen is that he brings some top-gear speed that has been lacking from the forward corps since the off-season departures of Ryan McLeod, Warren Foegele and Holloway. He’s also brought a little physicality, leading the team with 6 hits during his scant 2 games as an Oiler. Early days, obviously, but in a forward corps in need of speed, physical play and scoring, he’s checked all three boxes.

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Plan D

Finally, there’s the case of depth winger Drake Caggiula. Signed by then-GM Ken Holland to a two-year deal at NHL minimum in the summer of 2023, he finally got his second chance to play NHL games with the Oilers when McDavid got banged up earlier this month and delivered a couple of solid games on the fourth line. He was called up again last week after Hyman got hurt.

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On Saturday Caggiula didn’t score, but he had some standout moments nonetheless. In the first period, he covered for a wandering defenceman and made a textbook one-on-one stop of Kaapo Kakko, standing up the skilled forward just inside the Edmonton blueline and knocking him to the ice to put an early end to what had seemed like a threat. In the second, he sold out to block a dangerous rebound in the slot, sliding to get a piece of a slot shot that glanced off his shin pad and into the netting. Then in the third, he engaged in a spirited battle with Quick, simultaneously getting into the blue paint and under the netminder’s skin.

Caggiula’s performance stood out on a fourth line that on this night was Edmonton’s weak link. Perry coughed up the puck in a bad spot leading immediately to Artemi Panarin’s snipe that got Rangers on the board. Meanwhile 4C Derek Ryan had a forgettable night, taking a pair of penalties and somehow logging a -2 in a 6-2 win.

Yet the numbers game is such that it was Caggiula, not Ryan or Perry, who was “rewarded” with a trip back to Bakersfield after the game. Conclusion #1: life isn’t always fair. Conclusion #2: truly established veterans have a longer rope, especially those that haven’t previously cleared waivers. Caggiula has, and his (temporary?) reassignment enables the Oilers to accrue some cap space during the off-week.

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The new season has already provided the Drake a couple more cups of coffee than he got in the entirety of 2023-24 when the Oilers were largely healthy and other options more plentiful. If nothing else he has re-established himself as a viable option the next time the need arises. Which might be as soon as this weekend given there are just 11 healthy forwards

For the near future at least, Plans B, C and even D seem to be the way forward.

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