Bakersfield Condors And The Prospect Pipeline
Stan Bowman keeps saying the roster is set. Fine. Write it in pen if you want.
Video Transcript
With there being no discussions yet whatsoever to that, to that point, I mean, are you surprised?
Do you think that he is gonna be part, a big part of the Oilers this season?
And, and do you think they'll be interested in keeping him around?
Yeah, I think so.
I think he's the kind of player-- Here's how I see it.
He had a bit of a breakout season last, last season, but not enough to be totally confident that you know what you're signing if you sign him long-term.
He got his 18 goals, but he, we don't know if he's a 20-goal guy.
We assume that he probably will be at some point, but how much more than that can he be?
He's an excellent penalty killer.
He's a smart 200-foot player.
He's a lot of things that the Oilers really want.
But before you're gonna commit real heavy money and real heavy term to a player like him, you need to know for sure.
So I think that's probably why they're waiting.
They wanna see how this season plays out a little bit.
If he gets off to a really hot start to begin 2026-27, and it looks like he's gonna trend in that direction again, they'll probably get him signed.
If it takes a bit and he doesn't quite pick up where he left off last season, they're gonna have to make a decision.
Do we bridge him?
Do we go long-term?
Do we try to buy his unrestricted free agency years?
Like, what do we do with this player?
And I don't think they know the answer to that question right now.
Just something I think Savoy and his camp understands is that the Oilers need to find out what he is before they can really go, "Okay, we, we're gonna commit heavily to you."
The risk there, of course, is that he does have a massive season, that he plays a lot with Connor McDavid, that he really breaks out and maybe he's a 30-goal guy.
And we've seen what those young players are getting now, right?
So that is a bit of a risk, but I don't know that he's in that level of player that we've just seen these recent contracts go to, and he may not even be at the end of next season.
So I don't think there's a huge risk for the Oilers here, but they are playing with fire a little if he has a real big breakout season.
But they can always get that done partway through the year.
So I think they want him.
I think they know they'd like to keep him.
I think it's just a matter of term and how much, and they don't know yet what he is to be comfortable spending that kind of money on him.
But they're gonna avoid everything they did with Darnold and Nurse.
They're gonna avoid other things like they did with Holloway and Broberg and not getting those deals done.
Like, they're gonna avoid that.
So, I don't think it's a real panic yet, but I think they wanna find out what he is first.
