Revisiting the 2022 NHL entry draft - how did the Oilers make out?

Overall verdict

It's hard to say much about this draft considering we're only two years removed from it. Holland effectively removed three bullets from the chamber to make trades for the present, and since the Oilers were playoff contenders at this point, I can't say I blame him. It was effectively at this point that the future took a back seat to the present and the Oilers were in win-now mode.

I suspect the 2022 draft year may not be known so much for the Oilers' own picks but in trading for Matt Savoie, something we can thank what at the time was interim GM Jeff Jackson for, not Ken Holland.

For now, all we can say is Schaefer shows potential but isn't off to a good start in his pro career, while two of the latter three prospects in Jonssen and Yevseyev are trending either slightly up or down, while Maata is in a make or break season as a prospect and at this point looks to be a seventh round pick that is a failure to launch - which for the record isn't terrible for a seventh-round pick, in fact, if you're going to fail on a pick then the seventh-round is the ideal place to do it.

Bonus material

Ex-Oiler Tyson Barrie signs a PTO with the Flames

A player rumored to be someone coming to the Oilers in the form of Tyson Barrie has now, at least temporarily, come to the Flames on a PTO contract (Professional Try Out). There is a bit of a misconception amongst some out there that this means the player is now Calgary Flames property, but that's not actually true. A Professional Try Out is nothing more than getting a temporary audition with the team, so the Flames will be paying all of Barrie's bills within reason during his stay in Calgary under the length of his contract - which is usually about 10 days for most PTOs, so this means hotels (unless a current player has already invited him to stay with them for the duration of his PTO), meals, hygiene items, a rental car, perhaps an incidental or two, and then by the end, the player is simply released from the contract and at that point the Flames can either offer Barrie a full-fledged one way NHL contract or let him walk at which time the player will get back to the drawing board and figure out how to resume his career.

However, it's important to note a PTO is different from a regular NHL contract. Just because a team signs a guy to a PTO, doesn't mean he's that team's property - which is what a regular NHL contract means. It's strictly an audition, and the player is still free to sign with whichever team he wants to either during or after the PTO's expiration date. Puckpedia provides clarity in case you're confused right now.

As another example from the recent past, in 2016 the Oilers signed Kris Versteeg to a PTO, and offered him a regular one way contract, only to be spurned by Versteeg as he chose to sign with the Flames instead. There was nothing illegal about what the Flames did because it's not against the rules to offer a contract to someone who has only signed a PTO with another team, either during or after the contract is done, whereas if a player signed a full fledged one way contract he is then unable to sign with another team until that contract is up.

Personally, my money is on the Oilers paying attention to how Tyson Barrie's PTO is going and if they like what they see will snake him from the Flames, offer him a low end contract for one year, and bring him in to QB the second unit PP, providing the Oilers with a lethal 1-2 punch from the blueline on their PP, making it even better than last year. Of course, he'll have a bigger role on the Flames, but the team in Edmonton is so much better - the Oilers are a cup contender while Calgary is in the infancy of a forced rebuild, having lost most of their core players to free agency and trade requests over the last few seasons.

Barrie's stock is low right now because after he was the centerpiece of the trade from the Oilers side that brought Mattias Ekholm here and he went to Nashville, his career stalled because not only was he buried behind Roman Josi on the Preds PP, but eventually he became a healthy scratch on a lot of nights. That trade was very much to the detriment of Barrie himself despite the fact it made the Oilers much better. He wasn't happy in Nashville and never wanted to leave Edmonton in the first place. I suspect he'd jump at the chance to come back if GM Stan Bowman gives him that chance - I'm sure his players who were his teammates can fill Bowman in on what he brings to the table.