Recapping Edmonton Oilers Free Agency- Week One

Oilers trade Ryan Mcleod, Tyler Tullio to Sabres for Matthew Savoie

The Oilers have made one major trade this offseason as well. With the Oilers going on a huge spending spree in free agency, they ended up $2.45 million over the cap, which means that someone - likely two players - on the roster had to go.

With the re-upping of Henrique the Oilers have themselves an upgrade at third line center, which then made McLeod expendable, as putting him at fourth line center would be underutilizing him. With a cap overage that big, you know at least one more shoe was going to drop. Between this and the fact that Tyler Tullio, a fifth round pick of the Oilers back in 2020, looked to be regressing as he hasn't been able to translate his junior offense into the AHL, the Oilers saw an opportunity to shed cap space in a dump.

McLeod is a fine player who has speed, is defensively responsible, and has shown an ability to score at a secondary level. The big knock against him is he doesn't increase his level of physicality like the rest of the team once the playoffs hit.  

Matthew Savoie, on the other hand, is the brother of Carter, the Oilers draft pick they just cut loose, and he's a local boy from St. Albert. He was the ninth overall pick in 2022, so Sabres fans are up in arms about this one, which has got to be a good sign for us. The Sabres supposedly have a stacked prospect pool so they thought it would be OK to give up Savoie, who wasn't developing as quickly as they'd hoped. We'll see how it turns out, but on paper, the Oilers have greatly improved their prospect pool between Savoie and drafting Sam O'Reilly 32nd overall this year. So far this looks like the Oilers fleeced the Sabres, but only time will tell.  

By trading Mcleod, the Oilers saved $2.1 million against the cap this upcoming season, and at the time of this writing are now a mere $354,167 over the cap, a number they can easily remedy with another trade. Ceci will be the next guy traded, you read it here first.