EDMONTON — It seems a looong time ago that Edmonton was viewed on July 1 as a northern gulag.
Then again, the guy the Oilers drafted way back in 2010 was supposed to still be an Oiler when they became a Cup contender. Instead, it’s Jeff Skinner — drafted six spots behind Taylor Hall in 2010 but awarded the Calder Trophy that Oilers fans thought Hall deserved — who is the poster boy for what has become of the city that nobody used to want to play in.
“My goal is to be a piece of the puzzle, bring the things I do well to the team, and hopefully we can all have success,” Skinner said on Tuesday, after signing a one-year deal on possibly the best July 1 in the history of this franchise.
Skinner, 32, joined Adam Henrique (34) and Viktor Arvidsson (31) to head up a free-agent class that — almost to the man — took less money or term to be part of an Oilers team that will try to win one more game in 2024-25 than it won last season.
Skinner signed a one-year deal for $3 million. Arvidsson inked a two-year deal with a $4 million AAV. Henrique signed for two years at $3 million per. All three will make less this coming season than they earned last season. (Though in Skinner’s case he will still also be getting paid for the next six seasons by the Sabres, who bought out the final three years of his $9 million AAV deal last week.)
Throw in returnees Connor Brown (one year, $1 million), Mattias Janmark (three years, $1.45 AAV) and Corey Perry (one year, $1.15 AAV), and you’ve got a group of veteran players who now see Edmonton as a place to win, ahead of anything that has to do with weather or geography.
“The feeling I got over this past few months of being there is that it really is a team-first mentality — for everybody,” Henrique said. “Some guys sacrificing, some guys not in the lineup. Guys would stay ready to jump in the lineup and do whatever was needed on any given night for the team to win and have success.
“A veteran group that has that urge to win… To get that close, it says a lot about a lot of players who sacrificed a little bit in order to have that opportunity again.”
No team in the National Hockey League has a group of forwards like this team has. The Oilers’ second line would be the first line in a dozen cities, maybe more:
Nugent-Hopkins McDavid Hyman
Skinner Draisaitl Arvidsson
Janmark Henrique Brown
Holloway McLeod Perry
No team is better down the middle than McDavid, Draisaitl and Henrique, with young Ryan McLeod or the veteran Derek Ryan available at 4C. No team has a better five-man power-play unit, and perhaps even a No. 2 unit that will have to be established here just to spread out the opportunity between Skinner, Henrique, Arvidsson, Perry and Darnell Nurse
Returning a roster that crawled to within two goals of a Stanley Cup, then adding the pedigree of players that are Arvidsson and Skinner — with the only loss being Warren Foegele — is a pretty tidy bit of work by Oilers CEO Jeff Jackson, on his first Free Agent Day as an acting general manager.
“We’ve got players like Connor, Leon, Hyms, Nuge, Nursey, Ekky, and Bouch who are great players and great teammates,” Jackson said. “We’ve got a great group and that goes around the league … and the players, they know it. They’ve lived it.
“Ken Holland built a really good culture here over the last five years — a winning culture. It becomes a destination in many ways, and when the team is as competitive as we are, that clearly helps.”
The defence corps can always be improved. Adding a fourth pairing of veteran 30-year-olds Troy Stecher and Josh Brown — while losing Vincent Desharnais as a UFA — lends depth. But no team is perfect in a cap system, and the D corps is where folks will punch holes in the Oilers’ roster construction:
Ekholm Bouchard
Nurse Broberg
Kulak Ceci
Brown Stecher
In goal, Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard give the Oilers plenty of goaltending to reach the ultimate goal.
For Jeff Skinner, who has somehow managed to play 1,006 NHL games without even a single post-season contest, the roster he’s joining is super appealing.
“I mean, for sure,” he said. “I’ve been around a long time, been able to watch a lot of post-season (games). The run they went on last year… how strong their lineup is, it’s an exciting time to be an Oilers fan or part of the organization. I’m just excited to join.”
They’ll figure out their cap issue, with the Oilers currently $2.45 million over the cap, quite possibly with Evander Kane going on LTIR.
That problem is minor, compared to changing the culture that once existed here, a transition that these players say starts with the captain, Connor McDavid.
“His day-to-day drive to be better than he was the day before,” marvelled Henrique. “When the best player in the world is doing that, everyone is pushing to be their best. We’re not all going to be on his level obviously, but if every guy — in whatever role he is — is pushing to be better than he was the day before, the better the team is.
“You feel like you want to come back and try to complete what we didn’t complete this year.”
