One of the biggest critiques of the Edmonton Oilers organization is that they have one of the poorest prospect pools in the NHL. For example, Scott Wheeler of The Athletic ranked them as having the 29th farm system back in January. (Subscription required.)
Along these lines, it certainly didn't help when the Oilers lost Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway following last season, thanks to a double-offer sheet from the St. Louis Blues. Although expensive, we have always maintained general manager Scott Bowman should have matched at least one of the offers, but what's done is done.
You can make the case the Oilers' prospect pool wasn't particularly great even with Broberg and Holloway, but they certainly didn't do enough to make up for losing them both. In any event, The Athletic has now unveiled their list of which prospect from each NHL team has had the most promising 2024-25 season.
Daniel Nugent-Bowman wrote about the Oilers specifically (subscription required), and we like the direction he ended up going. He could have gone with a 'safe' bet and picked either Matt Savoie and Sam O’Reilly, who have had arguably the best seasons among all organization prospects, but are also ranked first and second in the pipeline.
A good choice for the Oilers
Instead though Nugent-Bowman went with Samuel Jonsson, who was selected by the Oilers in the fifth round of the 2022 NHL entry draft. And he has indeed had a promising 2024-25 campaign with BIK Karlskoga, who play in the second tier of Sweden's professional hockey league.
As per Elite Prospects, Jonsson recorded a 17-6-0 record in 24 appearances for BIK Karlskoga, in the process producing a .922 save percentage and 1.88 Goals Against Average. As per Nugent-Bowman, this resulted in the 21-year-old earning top goalie honors in the Allsvenskan.
This was an important season for Jonsson, who has intriguing size at 6 foot 5 and 201 lbs, but was also hoping to bounce-back from an injury-hit 2023-24 campaign which limited him to eight overall appearances. It's fair to claim that he more than exceeded expectations.
Pushing to move up the Oilers goalie rankings
When Wheeler ranked the Oilers' prospects at the beginning of the year, he had Jonsson at number nine and as the third-best goalie in the farm system. The Gävle, Sweden native was behind Olivier Rodrigue at number five and Eemil Vinni at number eight.
We won't go as far as claiming Jonsson has moved up the goalie rankings since then, put he's definitely helped his case. He at least has a strong chance of progressing, when you consider the Oilers goalie situation isn't the best as it is.
The next step for Jonsson is to take over from Lars Volden as the main goalie for BIK Karlskoga, with both getting their fair share of playing time, but Volden having 29 regular season appearances. YOu imagine securing the number on spot between the pipes will help towards convincing the Oilers to sign him to a deal.
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