3. Connor Brown
"The other Connor" is quietly having himself a career renaissance this season. Solid bottom six forwards will never garner a lot of headlines, which is why Connor Brown makes this list. He has already outscored last season's goal totals of four with six so far this season - and he scored way before the halfway mark this season.
Brown's ice time is also up this season vs. last (13:33 vs. last season's 12:48) as is his +/- (+3 this season vs. -8 last season). With more ice time and better defensive play, it's no wonder his boxcars are up from last season, as he's already put up the same as Podkolzin, 6-13-19 in 47 games this season vs. 4-8-12 in 71 games last season.
Now we're seeing what Brown can do when he's major injury-free. As a result of his efforts, just like Janmark he's doing spot duty in the top six, playing on the right side of Nuge's line with Janmark on the other side during McDavid's suspension. If he can churn out the 33 points his boxcars predict, that would be outstanding work for a bottom six forward. Brown is not particularly physical but he is 10th on the team in blocked shots with 25, just under Podkolzin's 28.
Brown is not a regular on the PP but he is a regular on the PK, the first unit to be exact. As a result he spends a little bit more time on the PK than Janmark does, averaging 1:23 per game. It's also worth noting that Brown is one of only two players on the Oilers to score a short-handed goal this year, Darnell Nurse being the other one. Brown may not have turned out to be the cheap top six winger we were hoping for, but give him credit, he's turned out to be a solid bottom six winger.
4. Brett Kulak
Although I still consider Brett Kulak to be overpaid, that's not so much his fault as him just being a victim of circumstance. It wasn't his fault that Mattias Ekholm was acquired and subsequently took the spot he was slated for in the lineup. A veteran of 545 NHL games, Kulak is a local boy (well close enough, Stony Plain) who was moved here at the trade deadline in the 2021-22 season, for what turned out to be journeyman William Laggeson, a conditional second round pick that turned out not to meet the condition and thus was a 2022 second round pick as well as a seventh round pick. Montreal also retained 50 percent of Kulak's cap hit at the time.
Kulak is best described as a solid third pairing blueliner who can sub in on the second pairing once in awhile and not look out of place. He can also contribute secondary levels of offence, as he produced 20 and 16 points respectively in his two previous seasons and looks to eclipse that this season. He's currently tied that same 16 points except in only 47 games (he put that up last season in a full 82 games). Of course Kulak currently sports an 8.1 shooting percentage, way above his career average of 3.7 percent.
Since there is a bit of a vacuum on the second pairing since the departure of Philip Broberg, Kulak has also spent a lot of time rotating in and out of there and the third pairing within many games. In fact, Kulak's ice time, for the first time in his career, has eclipsed the 20-minute mark, going 20:06 per game, and he is 10th on the team in +/- with a +4, up four points from last season. He's also a key shot blocker on the team, sitting third on the team at the time of this writing with 69 blocked shots (teehee) - only beaten by Nurse and Evan Bouchard.
As you'd expect, the guy doesn't play a lot of special teams but is a regular on the second unit PK, sixth on the team above Brown and Janmark with 1:30 on average per game. It remains to be seen once recent signing John Klingberg gets back to playing, whether that level of ice time will remain the same. However, since Klingberg hasn't been great defensively the last few seasons, I doubt Kulak's spot on the PK is in jeopardy at this point. It'll be interesting to see how Knoblauch incorporates Klingberg in the lineup and whether or not his minutes cut into Kulak's.