The Edmonton Oilers will be very involved in trade discussions in the months leading up to the NHL’s Trade Deadline, but who do they have to give up?
Rumours about potential Oilers targets have popped up over recent weeks, with defencemen like Marcus Pettersson and David Jiricek being linked to the team. Even goaltender John Gibson has been mentioned as a potential target.
Yet, not much discussion has been had about the type of assets that Edmonton may give up in any of those potential deals. Draft picks will, of course, be expendable for an Oilers team hoping to finally capture the Stanley Cup, but are there any players in the organization who could be moved out? Possibly.
Here are three potential players that the Oilers could dangle in trade talks this season:
1. Matthew Savoie
Though the Oilers just acquired Matthew Savoie over the summer, his name will be mentioned plenty by fans who are discussing potential trades.
There is a lot to like about Savoie, who is a former top-10 pick in the 2022 NHL draft, as he torched the WHL last season. He’s got the pedigree of a high pick and the high-end talent that you want to see in your prospect pool. The problem is that he is unlikely to help the Oilers win a Stanley Cup this season, making him somewhat expendable if the team is looking to upgrade the NHL roster.
Savoie is currently the team’s top prospect in a pretty barren pipeline, so there is always a risk in trading him, but the option is there.
2. Evander Kane
It might be shocking to see Evander Kane’s name here as the 33-year-old has yet to play a game this season due to a bevy of injuries, but it’s not without merit.
Kane is expected to return to NHL action as soon as January and that will cause quite a crunch for the forward group. The team is in need of a scoring bump, but betting on Kane to provide that after such an extended period off would be risky.
He found himself playing third-line minutes at times last season, and considering his $5.125 cap hit, it might be in the Oilers’ best interest to see if they can find him a new home. It’s tough to say what Kane’s value is on the trade market right now, and the recent injuries combined with the high cap hit may make it a difficult sell for some teams.
3. Sam O’Reilly
The Oilers are no stranger to trading first-round picks less than a year after they draft them, and Sam O’Reilly could be next.
Edmonton traded a first-round pick to the Philadelphia Flyers to select O’Reilly 32nd-overall during the 2024 NHL draft, signalling that the team felt strongly about adding him to the system. That alone might point to the Oilers preferring to keep O’Reilly over trading him, but GM Stan Bowman won’t have a lot of assets to work with if he wants to make a trade to improve this team.
While O’Reilly did have a good training camp, he could be the main target of a rebuilding team in any trade with the Oilers. Think Reid Schafer when the Oilers traded him to the Nashville Predators in a package for Mattias Ekholm back in 2023.