On Tuesday, the Edmonton Oilers issued a press release, announcing their training camp which is set to open Wednesday, September 17th for media and physical fitness testing. Training camps across the National Hockey League (NHL) are set to open this week ahead of the preseason schedule and the start of the 2025-26 regular season on October 7th, 2025.
The announcement of their main training camp comes just a day after the club announced they had released seven prospects that attended their rookie camp from their tryout agreements.
The team has no free agent invites set to attend camp at this time, despite rumours of potential PTO invites with players like former fan favourite winger, Klim Kostin recently expressing interest in re-signing with the team.
In total, the club is inviting 55 players (33 forwards, 16 defencemen, and six goaltenders) to their camp with many players vying for spots throughout the lineup.
Oilers have vacant spots
Recently, many were shocked when Oilers analyst Mark Spector made his 2025-26 opening lineup prediction which left hyped prospect Matt Savoie on the fringes of the teams roster. This came after a weekend where many felt that he was the best player on the ice during the team's home-and-home matches against their Battle of Alberta rivals Calgary Flames in their rookie camp matches.
In theory, there are many spots up for grabs, especially at forward with the team seeing a lot of turnover up front. The team traded away veteran pieces in the offseason like Evander Kane and Viktor Arvidsson in order to clear salary cap space.
The team also let many familiar faces walk in free agency like; Connor Brown, Drake Caggiula, Jeff Skinner, and more. This should leave vacancies in the roster that the club needs to fill out with many players vying for spots. Over the weekend during rookie camp games, many Oilers rookies made a good case for consideration.
No Oilers PTO invites leaves room for internal solutions
As previously mentioned, there has been plenty of speculation about the Oilers potentially using PTOs to make the camp more competitive, especially in net. However with Alexander Georgiev recently signing a one-year deal with the Buffalo Sabres, it leaves the thin goaltending market even more thin.
Fans have wanted Kostin to be brought in on a PTO for a while and with there always being a number of fringe roster players left playing musical chairs around this time, it is confusing why the club would not opt to bring at least somebody in. That announcement could be coming very soon but for now, it seems to signal a desire to let the club's prospects win roster spots.
During this past weekend's rookie camp games, the team's rookies were exceptional with many looking dangerous at various times in both games. Prospects Ike Howard and Savoie seem most likey to carve out roles with rookies like Noah Philp, David Tomasek, Josh Samanski, Quinn Hutson, and Viljami Marjala being dark horse candidates.
The team has not had high end prospects knocking on the door since Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway a few seasons ago. Hopefully, they are better managed this time around with general manager Stan Bowman at the helm.
There is going to be a lot of battles at camp coming up and many tough decisions for the Oilers brass ahead of the 2025-26 season as the club looks to make yet another push for the evasive Stanley Cup.