Edmonton Oilers
Insider Teases Oilers To Sign UFA After Learning Of Injury News
After learning about their four injured players, will the Edmonton Oilers jump back into the UFA market?
The Edmonton Oilers got bad news on Wednesday, learning that Matt Savoie, Frederik Andersen, Alec Regula, and Mattias Janmark will miss the start of training camp in a month. It’s unclear if they’ll be ready for the start of the NHL regular season. As such, Oilers Now host Bob Stauffer hinted that the Oilers might dip their toes back into the UFA pool to find a replacement.
He writes, “Matt Savoie (who took significant strides after the Olympic Break last season) and Mattias Janmark are both PK’ers. In theory, the Edmonton Oilers have the cap space to look at potentially bringing in a current UFA with PK experience.”
Obviously, this is not good news for the Oilers on several fronts. Missing four players to start camp isn’t ideal. Stauffer teasing the idea that the team might need to sign a UFA is even more troubling. Ryan Rishaug noted that Savoie and Andersen should be available by late October. That means they’ll miss at least a month of the season.
Needing to jump back into the free agent market suggests these injuries might not be short-term. That would be a huge blow, and as Stauffer noted, especially to the penalty kill.
Fans took to his post and expressed further concern about the goaltending. Without Andersen, it leaves the Oilers with Devon Levi and Tristan Jarry as the duo. That doesn’t provide much confidence, given Jarry’s 2025-26 season and Levi’s lack of NHL experience. One fan suggested the Oilers pivot back to Connor Ingram and sign him. He’s still out there and unsigned.
Another fan suggested the Oilers stand pat. The $4.7M in cap space they currently have becomes about $21.8M at the deadline if they don’t use it and let it accrue. Mathieu Joseph and Jason Dickinson can cover the PK minutes in the meantime. The Oilers can also hopefully find at least one other body to take on the job.
Maybe a PTO would suffice to give any of the injured players time to work their way back.
As for who the Oilers might look at on the UFA market, Stauffer didn’t dig into that in his post. It’s likely he’ll talk about it on the latest episode of Oilers Now. The market isn’t exactly ripe with penalty killers who can also play a useful role on an NHL team.
Next: Oilers’ Early Injuries Create Opportunity and Healthy Competition
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