Alex Formenton Gets One More NHL Chance With the Oilers

There’s something interesting about the Edmonton Oilers signing Alex Formenton to a one-year, $850,000 contract. On the surface, it doesn't look like much. It’s a depth signing, a training-camp competition, the kind of move that usually gets buried under all the bigger stories. But sometimes those are the moves worth watching.

The Oilers think Formenton is a young player with value.

Formenton is only 26, which is the first thing that jumps out. He isn't some veteran trying to squeeze one last NHL season out of his career. He was a 22-year-old who scored 18 goals and 32 points in 79 games for the Ottawa Senators in 2021-22. Then his NHL career came to a stop.

He spent the next few seasons playing in Switzerland, most recently scoring 13 goals and 23 points in 42 games for Ambri-Piotta. Now Edmonton is giving him another opportunity. That tells us something about how the Oilers see him.

Nobody is signing Formenton because of what he did in Switzerland. The Oilers are signing him because they remember what he looked like in the NHL. They’re betting that some of that player is still in there. That’s a pretty reasonable bet at $850,000.

Formenton returns to the NHL with a complicated history.

There’s obviously a complicated history surrounding Formenton’s absence from the NHL. He was acquitted in 2025 in the criminal case arising from the 2018 World Junior investigation, and Hockey Canada’s independent appeal process overturned his sanctions in August. Whatever anyone thinks about the larger controversy, the hockey question now is much simpler: can he still play?

That’s what training camp will determine. And this is where the signing gets interesting for Edmonton. The Oilers would like Formenton to skate, kill penalties, bring energy, and give Edmonton a useful bottom-six option. If he can do that, the contract has already started to make sense.

The other possibility is that there is more there than that. Formenton was a fast player before he left the NHL, and speed doesn't necessarily disappear at 26. The bigger question is whether he can make up for the years away from the league. NHL hockey has changed. His old teammates have changed. He has changed.

For Formenton, this isn't really a comeback story. It's an Oilers audition.

And that's probably the best way to look at this Oilers signing. Edmonton has given Formenton a relatively inexpensive chance to show that the player who scored 18 goals in Ottawa wasn't the end of the story. For $850,000, that's a gamble worth taking.

Sometimes the best depth signing is the player who gives you a chance to discover something you weren't expecting. Could Formenton be one of those players?