Throughout NHL history, the New York Rangers have benefitted from former Edmonton Oilers stars coming to their team late in their careers. Famous examples include; Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, and Glenn Anderson all spent the majority of their NHL careers as Oilers before spending brief stints with the Rangers.
As New York, who addressed their fans in a letter this week, enter their second rebuild of the past eight years, there are plenty of veteran pieces that could find themselves on the trade block according to rumours. One of which is pending unrestricted free agent, 34 year old winger Artemi Panarin who is in the final year of his seven-year contract, carrying an $11.642 annual average value.
His availability opens up the possibility for the Oilers to do what has been done to them many times, acquire a long term Rangers star in Panarin.
Panarin would be a perfect fit for Oilers
The Oilers have a number of needs as they enter the 2026 NHL trade deadline in just over six weeks with the main theme being an influx of depth scoring. Although Panarin would not be a 'depth scorer' his addition would help to bolster the team's forward group and give them more depth by pushing some players down.
The argument for the Oilers acquiring Panarin is not a tough sell. He is one of the premier offensive players in the entire league, playing at or above a point-per-game pace since 2017-18. Despite being an elite player, he has not been able to play enough in the playoffs, embarking on only two big runs in the postseason since he entered the league, which could make Edmonton an attractive destination for this year.
At 34 years old, Panarin is playing in his 11th NHL season, he has logged 799 games, scoring 318 goals and 603 assists for 921 points. Despite his long career, he has played only 73 games in the postseason, missing the playoffs entirely last season. That could change if he joins a team like the Oilers who have made the Stanley Cup Finals in back-to-back seasons.
There is also the fact that Oilers general manager Stan Bowman has history with Panarin, he was the GM for the Chicago Blackhawks when Panarin was signed as a free agent to the league in 2015. They were members of the Blackhawks organization together for two full seasons before Bowman dealt him to the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2017.
The cost of acquiring Panarin
Of course, the one major wrinkle in all of this is the cost of acquiring a player of Panarin's calibre in terms of both assets and salary cap. Not only will it be a high cost to trade for him but the amount of movement that will need to happen for the Oilers makes it a difficult task to pull off.
However it is doable if the Oilers are willing to part with one of their top young players in Matt Savoie or Isaac Howard. On top of a few key young players to offer, the club has their first round pick for every draft after this one and their second rounder every year aside from 2029.
It would be high but using last year's Rantanen to the Carolina Hurricanes deal as a comparable, the Oilers could make it work. The Hurricanes dealt forward's Martin Necas and Jack Drury along with a second and fourth round pick to the Colorado Avalanche for Rantanen. They also dealt a third to the Blackhawks to retain half of Rantanen's contract and acquire Taylor Hall in the move.
The Oilers could move one of Howard and Savoie along with a combination of their draft picks to acquire the Russian. Both Savoie and Howard are generally considered to be valuable players and should be big enough assets in this deal if packaged with a first round draft pick or more.
Oilers salary cap situation makes it difficult
Now the biggest hurdle, the Oilers will have to do a lot of maneuvering to get the cap to make sense. As mentioned before, Panarin's cap hit is $11.64 million, a number that greatly exceeds what the Oilers have available on their payroll.
Looking at the Oilers current cap situation, they are about $2.5 million over the NHL salary cap ceiling, thanks to Adam Henrique being on long term injured reserve. This means that even at fifty percent retention, the Oilers would have to clear roughly $8.3 million in cap off their books.
GM Stan Bowman and co. would be forced to get creative trading players like; Andrew Mangiapane, Adam Henrique, Mattias Janmark, and Jack Roslovic and rolling with a minimal 18 skater and two goalie roster. There is no doubt that it would be difficult but the potential price of adding a player like Panarin could make it worth it.
We have seen multiple teams in recent years take big swings like this and get rewarded like the Vegas Golden Knights and Florida Panthers who have won Stanley Cups. There have been others like the Dallas Stars who took a big swing on acquiring the aforementioned Rantanen and made it all the way to the Western Conference Finals.
Panarin would be the perfect fit for the Oilers but can the team do what is necessary to pull it off? They have seven weeks to work it all out.