Where will newest defenceman Alec Regula play for Oilers?

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The Edmonton Oilers have added another waiver claim to the roster and this time it’s a defenceman.

In what has been a shift in the team’s strategy in acquiring players, Oilers GM Stan Bowman has been quite active on the waiver wire early into the season. It started with claiming forward Kasperi Kapanen off waivers from the St. Louis Blues and, yesterday, the team decided to do the same thing with defenceman Alec Regula being claimed from the Boston Bruins.

It’s a curious move by Oilers management to add a right-shot defender who is unlikely to play top-four minutes for the NHL club. Edmonton is currently flush with RHD as they employ Evan Bouchard, Troy Stecher, and Ty Emberson on the roster and have the likes of Phil Kemp, Josh Brown, Connor Carrick, and Ronnie Attard playing down in the AHL.

The Oilers have just one left-handed defenceman in the AHL, Cam Dineen.

At first glance, this muddies where exactly Regula could be expected to play within the organization. It appears he would now sit fourth on the depth chart when it comes to RHD and it would be pretty strange to acquire Regula only to put him onto an AHL club dominated by right-shot defenders.

A spot on the NHL roster is likely for the 24-year-old Michigan native, and here is how it could work. The Oilers are much more comfortable with Stecher in the lineup instead of Travis Dermott at this juncture. The ex-Toronto Maple Leafs defender has been scratched for eight straight games and only came into the lineup last time because Darnell Nurse was injured.

With the Bakersfield Condors in dire need of another left-hand shot, it would make sense for the Oilers to send Dermott down to balance out the AHL defensive pairs. However, this would cause the team to run with just six defenders on the NHL roster and, given how poorly Brown has played this season and the fact that he has a $1 million cap hit, there isn’t an obvious replacement to take Dermott’s spot as the team’s seventh defender.

An argument could be made for a player like Kemp or Max Wanner, but the preference for those players would be to get more ice time in the AHL rather than being a press box regular in the NHL.

This is where Regula comes in. He’s a young, cheap, defenceman that has played limited time in the NHL but does possess some intriguing tools. If called into the lineup, he wouldn’t be expected to play anything more than a third-pairing role, which should be manageable for a young player like himself.

It’s highly unlikely that Regula will be given the type of opportunity that Kapanen had when he was initially claimed off waivers a few weeks ago, but he will be able to fill an important depth role for this club as the calendar turns to 2025.

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