Edmonton Oilers and general manager Stan Bowman have a lot of work to do this off-season, starting with hiring a new head coach amongst many other things.
In short order, the Oilers along with all 31 other NHL clubs will participate in the annual draft and then less than a week later will be the start of the 2026 free agency period. The Oilers have multiple pending free agents who will need contracts this summer and will have to make tough decisions.
There are players the Oilers should obviously walk away from and there are some that are not so obvious. One of those is the subject of today's article, Jack Roslovic.
The Roslovic signing was a success
The 29 year old forward made a puzzling move last summer, rather than sign a contract right away on July 1st, he held out and waited. Then waited and waited and waited until the 2025-26 season had begun and it was announced that him and the Oilers had come to terms signing him to a one-year deal worth $1.5 million.
This contract was a huge success and for obvious reasons, the cost was so low. It was almost impossible for this contract to fail, given the acquisition cost was only a hair above the AHL contract burial limit.
Now, at season's end Roslovic has put together a solid year scoring 21 goals and 15 assists for 36 points in 69 games during the regular season. In the post season he recorded one assist in six games en route to the Oilers first round exit.
He ended the year on a half-point per game pace with 10 points (five goals, five assists) through 20 games. It is not a bad pace and for the right price, the Oilers should probably attempt to bring him back.
Roslovic comparable contracts
It is hard to find exact 1:1 comparisons when it comes to NHL contracts so my methodology is to look at a handful of players to try and determine a comparable deal. It is not an exact science, sometimes players take hometown or state tax discounts and sometimes teams overpay their players. So, I tried to look at players who signed their UFA contracts based on similar point production and age. Puckpedia.com was an enormous help in this step.
I came up with a long list that boasted names like; Craig Smith, Ivan Barbashev, Christian Dvorak, Jakob Silfverberg, Alex Wennberg, Patrik Berglund, Artem Anisimov, and more. Looking at them, they all seemed to fit into Roslovic's overarching impact of a middle six winger/centre who can score around a half-point per game pace.
Using specific UFA contracts they signed, I was able to determine a rough average cap hit percentage of their deals. Many of whom signed a five year contract with a few signing shorter term two or three year deals.
The comparable contract I came up with was roughly 6 percent cap hit percentage for his contract. In a rising cap world at $104 million, this put him at around $6.2 million. However, I should note that a few contracts came in lower, at a more modest 5 percent or so, which would give him roughly $5.2 million.
Roslovic may not be worth the price
One of the things that harms teams and gives them an early demise is mismanaging their salary cap. This is especially a problem when clubs allocate large chunks of their salary cap to sign middling players.
Ironically, this was an issue the Chicago Blackhawks faced under Bowman, when he was too loyal to his players, signing some to inflated contracts that became albatross deals and forced them to shed them for miniscule returns. A famous example being the Bryan Bickell deal to Carolina, that saw the Blackhawks shed Bickell's contract after an injury riddled season, having to pair him with Teuvo Teravaianen to pull it off.
Tangent aside, signing Roslovic whose career high is 45 points to a $5 million or $6 million contract would be a mistake. Especially when he only scored at a 42 point pace last season. The Oilers should be trying to recreate the Roslovic signing instead of rewarding him for taking a discount.
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