The Edmonton Oilers are gearing up for hopefully another long playoff run and the first step is upgrading the team at the trade deadline. In order to make moves at the deadline though you need assets and for the Oilers, they just do not have many assets that they can get rid of. That list of assets gets even smaller with some recent news.
Henrique has one too…not sure if both years, but definitely now. Just like Buchnevich in STL getting the full NTC added to the last year of this deal, there are always details that sneak by.
— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) March 3, 2025
On his podcast, Elliotte Friedman brought up the fact that he discovered that Viktor Arvidsson has a NMC (no movement clause) on his contract. This means that he cannot be traded or assigned to the minors without his consent. Then this morning, Friedman also broke that Adam Henrique also has an NMC. This causes the Oilers some issues.
With the Oilers looking to upgrade in any way possible the smaller number of options they have to make a trade, the harder it becomes for them to make a deal happen. It isn't just that fact that you could have traded away the players, there is the cap hit that both of those players hold. With Evander Kane's LTIR status still up in the air the Oilers have almost no money to play with when bringing in a new player, which means money has to go out.
The Oilers have handcuffed themselves with the NMC
As it sits right now Corey Perry is the only forward making over 1 million that doesn't have some sort of no movement clause. This has handcuffed the Oilers in regard to the moves that the Oilers can make. This is the management's own fault and now they are going to figure out what to do if they want to make some sort of trade.
Now there is always the chance that a player could waive their NMC, but if I were a player on the Oilers I wouldn't want to waive. You are on a team that is a cup favourite and will likely be getting traded to a team that is out of the playoff race, the main goal of playing in the NHL is to win a Cup, if you leave Edmonton your chances are only going to get worse to win a cup.
Stan Bowman will need to get creative
With a majority of this Oilers team on NMC contracts, it is going to be difficult for Bowman to make any sort of money in-money out deal, but that is what the Oilers brought in Bowman for. It might not be easy to get a move done, he will need to find a way to get things done. I think if any large move goes down there will be involvement of Kane. It is either going to be the fact that he stays on LTIR, and the Oilers get his cap space, or he is being traded away as he only has a modified NMC and has a 16-team trade list that he can be traded to.
While I think if the Oilers team all plays to the best of their abilities, they have a good chance to go on a deep playoff run again this season. The main problem so far this season is that a lot of players have been underperforming, if these players start playing as good as they can a lot of the Oilers questions would go away.