Edmonton Oilers

Ryan Shea’s Bargain Deal with Oilers Puts Him in Elite Value Company

The hope is that the Ryan Shea contract with the Edmonton Oilers is a bargain, and given the list he landed on last year, it might be.

by
NHL Trade Talk
July 30, 2026

Ryan Shea quietly put together one of the best bargain seasons of any NHL defenseman last year, and the Edmonton Oilers made sure they were the ones to cash in on it. Seen as a smart value deal at the time of the signing (right after trading Darnell Nurse), one writer has pointed out how good a deal this might actually be.

Ryan Long of Pro Hockey Rumors compiled a list of the best bargain deals by measuring the cost per point. Interestingly, Shea landed behind only Darren Raddysh (Toronto Maple Leafs) and Jackson Lacombe (Anaheim Ducks).

Long writes:

“The quietest breakout on the list belonged to Shea, who logged 35 points and a team-best plus-30 across 80 games for Pittsburgh while emerging as a trusted penalty killer on a $900K deal. An undrafted late bloomer who spent years buried on depth charts, he had never topped a handful of points in a season before finally getting a runway with the Penguins. He parlayed that platform into the biggest security of his career: a five-year, $20MM contract ($4MM AAV) with Edmonton on July 1, signed within the hour after the Oilers dealt Darnell Nurse‘s $9.25MM cap hit to San Jose to clear the room.”

That breakout didn’t go unnoticed. On July 1, the Oilers signed Shea to a five-year, $20 million contract worth $4 million annually. They saw what he did in Pittsburgh and are betting that his breakout season is just the start of what he’s capable of. He seems to be coming into his own, and at $4 million, if he can keep trending upward, he stands to be a great value pickup.

He’s not about to make the list again based on his new deal — 35 points would be about $114K based on his $4 million AAV — but defensemen are typically going to be on this list at the start of their career or in the tail end. So too, these guys bring so much more than just scoring. Most of what the Oilers will be paying for is a solid two-way game, smart in his own end, and stable.

For a team that just cleared significant space, locking in a two-way, penalty-killing defenseman coming off a career year at a reasonable price looks like exactly the kind of value move Edmonton needed on the back end.

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