EDMONTON — By gawd, the Edmonton Oilers have found a goalie.
Call the kids, Martha. They’ve gotta see this too.
On the day that Connor McDavid began what could be his final contract as an Edmonton Oiler, general manager Stan Bowman finally found the pedigree of a goalie that McDavid has never had as a teammate.
Frederik Andersen, fresh off a Stanley Cup run with the Carolina Hurricanes in which he started 16 of the Hurricanes’ 19 games, signed a bonus-laden one-year deal to try to get the Oilers that elusive Stanley Cup they seek, with the end of the McDavid window possibly drawing near.
From Cam Talbot to Mike Smith to Stuart Skinner to the latest tandem of Tristan Jarry and Connor Ingram, McDavid’s 11 seasons in Edmonton have played out in front of a legion of good-but-not-great netminders. The Mikko Koskinens whom Oilers fans wanted to love, but whose work in the crease did not always love them back.
July 1 started slowly, but ramped into quite possibly the best in Oiler history — better, even, than the year they signed Zach Hyman? — The fuse was lit for Bowman when Darnell Nurse agreed to expand his three-team trade list to a fourth team, the San Jose Sharks.
From there, at around 1 p.m. local time in Edmonton, Bowman did what many thought was not possible: he traded Nurse and his entire $9.25 million annual salary (four seasons remaining) to the Sharks with no retention, even getting a useful defenceman and a prospect (Shakir Mukhamadullin and Zack Sharp) in return.
With a sudden infusion of cap space, Bowman spent the afternoon and early evening reeling off seven more transactions, none bigger than when he enticed Andersen to play for a base salary of just $1 million, with incentives that could earn him an additional $1.8 million in bonuses should Edmonton win the Stanley Cup with Andersen playing in at least half the playoff games in each series.
The 36–year-old Anderson has averaged over $5 million in annual average value over the past 10 seasons. With Edmonton, the former Anaheim Duck, Toronto Maple Leaf and Hurricane will be guaranteed $1 million with a shot at $2.8 million — on a one-year deal that puts Edmonton in the goalie market again next summer, if they so choose.
It must be said: All those years, all that trash talk about how the Oilers GM of the day couldn’t find a goalie? They end now.
All the Jack Campbells, the Tristan Jarrys, the raised eyebrows around the July 1 trade that brought in Devon Levi from Buffalo, Bowman muted them all by snapping up one of the premier goalies on this summer’s market with a team-friendly contract.
And here’s perhaps the most intriguing part:
Andersen’s $1 million AAV leaves the Oilers with 23 players signed and still $6.4 million in cap space, more flexibility than a dozen other teams, including contenders like Vegas, Florida, Colorado, Minnesota, or “next tier” teams like Los Angeles, Boston and the New York Rangers.
At the Trade Deadline, $6 million worth of cap space equates to roughly $27 million in AAV. That would allow the Oilers to pick up the most expensive player available, or a combination of two or three deadline buys that make the difference between being good and great.
On June 30, it seemed a tad far-fetched that this Oilers team, by their own admission in decline since losing that Game 7 to Florida in the Stanley Cup Final back in 2024, could cobble together a roster worthy of taking a run at their third Cup appearance in four springs.
Well, even if we agree that the current roster could use a tweak or two, Edmonton’s ability to add at the Trade Deadline means that what we see today could be vastly improved come March.
Let’s face it: July 1 has been less than kind to this latest Oilers regime, as well as to ones that preceded it. Who can forget Peter Chiarelli welcoming Milan Lucic with a big free agent deal? Or Holland digging Jack Campbell out of a lean market, only to have to buy him out soon after?
Consecutive July 1s under Jeff Jackson (Jeff Skinner and Viktor Arvidsson) and Bowman (Andrew Mangiapane) have left Oilers fans joking that perhaps they’d be better off if the local GM went camping on Canada Day and left his phone behind.
Well, Stan Bowman’s phone rang with a call from Darnell Nurse’s agent around lunchtime Wednesday, and the rest is history.
Now, if Frederik Andersen can only stay healthy….
EDM
