Three Reasons Why The Oilers Deserve What They Got

You can’t open the internet as Oilers fans and not see something about the Edmonton Oilers and their cap related problems. While right now it is focused around the offer sheets that the St. Louis Blues have tendered to Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway the main issue for this started long before this offseason. Almost all of the issues can be blamed on previous mistakes.

If you look back in the past there are lots of signings and moves that have put the Edmonton Oilers in this position. While there are some that have had a small effect, there are some major ones that have put the Oilers into the spot where they can’t even sign their own prospects. Here are the list of what I believe are the three biggest problems that have put the Oilers in this spot.

1. Jack Campbell Signing

To be fair to Ken Holland, I blame Jack Campbell more than I blame Holland. When Holland signed Campbell the Oilers and their fans were hoping for a goalie that was going to be their starter for years to come. When Campbell was signed I thought that the goaltending issue was solved. Turns out I could not have been more wrong.

While the Oilers tried their best to get Campbell back to his old form he just could not get to the calibre where he was a dependable starting goalie. The only good thing that came out of the Campbell miss was the Oilers got to see what they have in Stuart Skinner. Being forced to buy Campbell out, while it did save them money this year it will end up costing them in the long run. In a prefect world there is no signing and the Oilers have all of that money off the books.

2. Milan Lucic Signing

This one hurts, and has hurt the Edmonton Oilers for a lot of years. The reason this still hurts today is because when the Oilers trade Lucic for James Neal, they then bought out Neal and that buy-out is costing the Oilers $1.9 million on the cap. If the Oilers had that $1.9 million they likely would not be in this current spot.

While at the time Lucic was a player who was sought after by lots of teams, at the time the Oilers signed that deal you knew that it was going to end up hurting the Oilers. After a couple if years Lucic lost almost all of his foot speed and was a complete liability and could play max third line minutes. For the amount he was getting paid 3rd line wasn’t an option.

He was then traded to the Calgary Flames straight up for James Neal. Neal did have a couple of okay years for the Oilers, but his contract was structured in a way that it was much easier to buy out. So that is what the Oilers didn’t and now they are stuck with that dead cap.

3. The Connor Brown Bonus Overages

The Edmonton Oilers may still have Connor Brown on their roster and his current contract may be a value deal, but his bonus overages that are hitting the team this year are really crippling this team. The only good thing about this is once Brown found his grove late in the season he was pretty effective.

The problem is that just like the previous two points the Brown overages is dead cap space. If you add his actual cap hit to hit bonus overages Brown would be overpaid, the fact the Ken Holland knew that this was likely going to be the case has handcuffed this years Oilers team.

The team has a total bonus overage of $3.55 million, while that wouldn’t be enough to sign Broberg at the amount he was offered by the Blues, if they had that earlier they likely would have came to a deal before it got to this point.

While I am sure that most of your reading this were waiting for me to mention the Darnell Nurse contract, the fact that he is playing in the Oilers top 4 on the blue line makes him actually useful to this team. The dead cap is killer for this Oilers team, if they had no buy-outs of bonus overages they would have $6,566,667 more to spend on their roster. That number is pretty much the combo of both the offer sheets. Basically, if they had no dead cap they wouldn’t need to be concerned about losing two of their best young players.