Oilers Cap Picture: Busy Summer, Not Much Room to Work
The Edmonton Oilers aren’t in full cap panic mode, but they’re definitely not in a comfortable spot either. After some earlier roster shedding in past years, things have stabilized a bit on the surface. They’re sitting with roughly $15.5 million in projected cap space, which sounds fine at first glance. The problem is how quickly that number disappears once you start actually filling out the roster.
A big chunk of that space is tied up in their own UFAs. Connor Murphy, Jason Dickinson, and Kasperi Kapanen are all expected to be priorities to bring back, especially because they each filled useful roles last season. Murphy and Dickinson gave them legit defensive reliability, while Kapanen added speed and middle-six flexibility.
The issue is cost. Dickinson alone could land in the $5 million AAV range, Murphy around $3.5–3.6 million, and Kapanen somewhere around $3 million. Even if Edmonton manages to shave those numbers down a bit with term, that’s still a big bite out of the cap.
If the Oilers sign these three players, there’s little room left.
If the Oilers bring those three back within that range, they’re suddenly down to roughly $3–4 million in space, with most of the roster already spoken for. That’s not ideal when you still need to fill out depth spots and potentially upgrade key areas.
That’s where things get tricky. Jack Roslovic is the big question mark. He had a strong regular season with 21 goals in 69 games, but his playoff impact just wasn’t there. In a perfect world, you’d keep him, but with limited cap flexibility, he might end up being the odd man out. Especially with younger, cheaper options like Ike Howard potentially stepping into a bottom-six scoring role.
The Oilers’ goalies are the biggest problem the team faces.
And then there’s the elephant in the room — goaltending. Right now, Tristan Jarry is the only NHL-calibre goalie under contract. But, having watched the Oilers, that’s not exactly a solution. Fixing that situation alone could eat up most of their remaining cap space, and that’s before you even think about improving the blue line or adding more speed up front.
So even though $15 million sounds like breathing room, it really isn’t when you zoom in. This feels more like a “tread water and hope for smart bargains” type of offseason than a big swing one. Edmonton has enough pieces to stay competitive, but not nearly enough flexibility to fix everything that showed up as a weakness.
The Oilers aren’t stuck, but there are problems to fix.
In other words, the Oilers aren’t stuck — but they’re definitely juggling a lot of moving parts with very little margin for error. How this all impacts the Connor McDavid situation is still up in the air. But it is a concern.