The Edmonton Oilers face a Tuesday morning deadline to match the offers that St. Louis extended to defenseman Philip Broberg and forward Dylan Holloway, an unprecedented move for a team to tender an offer to two players from the same roster.
Edmonton had serious salary cap issues that they needed to resolve quickly in order to get one or both deals done. They’ll have to do a lot to get under the salary cap. before the offer sheets.
On Sunday, the Oilers were busy with this process.
At 5:45 p.m. CT, the Oilers signed forward Vasily Podkolzin from Vancouver in exchange for a fourth-round draft pick in the 2025 NHL Draft (which originally came from Ottawa).
Podkolzin, 23, was selected 10th overall in the 2019 NHL Draft and has two years remaining on a contract that carries a salary cap hit of $1 million. He played a full season in the NHL for the Canucks in 2021-22, scoring 14 goals with 12 assists in 79 games. He has appeared in 58 games over the past two seasons, recording nine points.
At 10 p.m. CT, the Oilers then traded defenseman Cody Ceci with a third-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft for defenseman Ty Emberson from the San Jose Sharks.
Emberson, 24, was originally selected in the third round (No. 73) by Arizona in the 2018 NHL Draft. He has now been traded twice — aside from the pick originally used to select him when Marcus Kruger was traded from Carolina to Arizona — and has been claimed off the waivers list once. He made his NHL debut with the Sharks last season, appearing in 30 games and scoring 10 points. He has one year remaining on his contract with a salary cap hit of $950,000.
Emberson is a right-handed player and, as Bob Stauffer noted on Twitter, “had a very good season playing for Kris Knoblauch and Steve Smith in Hartford (AHL) in 2022-23.” Knoblauch is now the head coach in Edmonton.
Ceci, 30, has one year left on his contract with a salary cap hit of $3.25 million.
For those keeping score at home, the Oilers signed two players for a total salary of $1.95 million, losing $3.25 million. Stan Bowman just cleared $1.3 million off his salary cap and signed two potential NHL players.
Edmonton will reportedly have Evander Kane (and his $5.125 million salary cap) on the LTIR to start the season. However, according to PuckPedia, the Oilers are now $5,925,541 over the salary cap. These calculations include the potential salary caps of Holloway ($2,290,457) and Broberg ($4,580,917) ($6,871,374 total). That’s a difference of about $946,000 to get under the cap before Kane is placed on the LTIR.
The Ceci trade was one of the most sensible deals if the Oilers were trying to get under the salary cap whether they matched the offer documents or not. The signing of a forward in Podkolzin is interesting. The return of a potential NHL player in Emberson is also intriguing.
It is also noteworthy that the Oilers now only have one pick in the first five rounds of the 2025 NHL Draft – a fourth-round pick.
Will the Oilers amend the offer documents before the deadline? Will there be more offers from Edmonton? We’ll see soon. The deadline to amend the offer documents is Tuesday morning.
