Edmonton Oilers Sign Ryan McLeod, What’s Next?

Last night the Edmonton Oilers and Ryan McLeod agreed to a two-year deal with an AAV of $2.1 million, avoiding arbitration. This deal comes only a few days before the scheduled arbitration hearing. Avoiding arbitration is always a good thing in my opinion as it makes it so that the team doesn’t have to pick apart their own player.

Ryan McLeod Will Be The Edmonton Oilers 3rd Line Center

Now that this deal is done we know have a very good idea as to what the forward group will look like this season. After adding a few depth players and one hopeful top 6 player there isn’t much room to add any more forwards.

Hyman – McDavid – Brown

Nugent-Hopkins – Draisaitl – Kane

Holloway- McLeod – Foegele

Janmark – Pederson – Ryan

This is what my best guess of the forward lines will look like. In my opinion, this forward group is slightly better than the one they started with last season.

Having Nugent-Hopkins on the second-line wing versus the third-line center does make the center position slightly weaker, but it improves their top six more. Another area of improvement is the fourth line. No offence to Malone, but he really isn’t an NHL player. Having Janmark in that spot is an improvement. You know what you will be getting from Janmark, whereas playing Malone was really rolling the dice.

What Comes Next For The Edmonton Oilers This Offseason?

Now that the Edmonton Oilers know what they are giving Ryan McLeod they can now work on the Evan Bouchard contract. According to PuckPedia the Edmonton Oilers have $4.28 million in cap space. That is with 20 players on the roster.

This means if they can get Bouchard to sign a deal that comes in under $3.5 million they could add a player at the league minimum and have a 22-man roster. If he signs for more than that they will need to run a 21-man roster.

In a perfect world, you can get Evan Bouchard done for that amount, but I wouldn’t get your hopes too high. There are comparables for Bouchard and they are all above $3.5 million per year.

The main point here is that I don’t see too many changes coming to the Edmonton Oilers roster till the start of training camp. Bouchard will get a new deal and maybe the Oilers will add another expensive bottom 6 forward. Asides from that don’t be expecting much news coming out of the Edmonton Oilers.