Bringing back Evander Kane Part 2

OK, so per my last blog I have Kane hypothetically signed, now the Edmonton Oilers need to clear some cap space for him.

There’s no question the Oilers are a bit up against it but they should still be able to make a Kane contract work if they move out a few guys.

At this point the Oilers have just over $7 million in cap space, and with that they have to re-sign Ryan McLeod, Jesse Puljujarvi, Kailer Yamamoto, Brett Kulak, and maybe even a goalie with that space depending on whether Mike Smith retires or not.

None of those players will be all that expensive to re-sign on their own, but when all of them need to be re-signed at once it tends to evaporate the cap space rather quickly.

There are a few players who can be moved out to make room that should be easily able to be replaced with cheaper players.  Let’s see what we could do on that front now.

It should be pretty obvious by now that Evan Bouchard has usurped Barrie’s spot on the second pairing for the Oilers.

Barrie accepted his demotion to the third pairing without publicly complaining and that’s all well and good but now that the season’s over that makes him a luxury the Oilers simply can’t afford going forward.  You shouldn’t be paying a bottom pairing guy $4.5 million a season no matter how good he is.

There’s all kinds of possibilities for where Barrie can go – but I’m going to suggest Ottawa in exchange for either their first round pick or both their second round picks this year (they have two of them, their own and Tampa Bay’s after trading for Brayden Coburn and Cedric Paquette) and Nikita Zaitsev (provided Ottawa retains 50% of Zaitsev’s cap hit – otherwise this trade is rendered pointless as Zaitsev has the same $4.5 million cap hit as Barrie and is an inferior puck mover).  Alternately, if Holland likes the internal options at third pairing left D better than anything from the outside, he can simply re-sign Kulak, move him to the right side (he plays both sides) and then play him with either Broberg or Niemelainen (whoever makes the team out of training camp).

In that case, he could simply trade Barrie to a number of teams for a first rounder or two second rounders and a solid prospect.

Soon to be ex-Oiler goaltending prospect Ilya Konovalov has reportedly wanted to go back to Russia, and already signed a contract to play in the KHL next season, so the Oilers have terminated his contract.

Much like with Mikko Koskinen, the timing of this is rather odd. After all, it’s a well known fact that Skinner basically looks like he’s punched his ticket to the NHL next year – between what he’s accomplished in the AHL and how he’s looked in callups to the NHL, it’s looking like he’s going to make the jump full time next season.

That would’ve put Konovalov as next in line to be the starter in Bakersfield. Now granted, Konovalov didn’t exactly have the greatest stats in his rookie season in North America, but to give up on his NHL dream after only one season in the minors? Especially right as he’s poised to get more starts? Both things that make this a very odd timing on Konovalov’s part.

Well, this puts the Oilers as primed to take a goalie in the draft at some point this summer.

It also leaves the Oilers with a tandem in the minors of second round pick from 2018 Olivier Rodrigue and college free agent signing from earlier in the season Ryan Fanti who will be making his pro debut next season – notwithstanding of course another college free agent signing or a draft pick that’s ready to make the jump to the minors.

So, in goal it’s looking pretty shallow in Bakersfield next season. Not that Konovalov would’ve moved the needle that much based on last season, but at least there would’ve been more competition that would make everyone in the organization feel better in case of injury on the big club.