Wednesday: The Oilers have made it official, extending qualifying offers to only Ethan Bear and William Lagesson. That leaves Athanasiou, Benning, Logan Day, Cameron Hebig, Ryan Kuffner, Ryan Mantha, Angus Redmond and Nolan Vesey unqualified. All of them will become unrestricted free agents on Friday.
Tuesday: The deadline to submit qualifying offers to restricted free agents is tomorrow evening and the Edmonton Oilers have some interesting decisions to make. After making his first-round selection tonight, Oilers GM Ken Holland spoke to reporters including Ryan Rishaug of TSN and explained that he doesn’t think the team will qualify Andreas Athanasiou or Matt Benning.
This is a scenario we discussed in our recent Free Agent Focus piece and is a disaster for the Oilers. Edmonton used two second-round picks (and Sam Gagner) to land Athanasiou from the Detroit Red Wings at the deadline and will now let him walk into unrestricted free agency just a few months later. The speedy forward ended up playing just 13 total games for the organization, scoring a single goal and being held completely scoreless in the Oilers four postseason games.
After scoring 30 goals in 2018-19, Athanasiou was a risky player to qualify for the Oilers given the flat cap landscape in the NHL. He would have required a $3MM offer just to retain his rights, but then could have earned even more than that through arbitration. Edmonton has just under $8.8MM in cap space and need to both re-sign restricted free agents Ethan Bear and Jesse Puljujarvi while also upgrading their roster considerably in free agency. If Oscar Klefbom is out for the season his cap hit can be placed on long-term injured reserve for a little more flexibility, but unless they thought Athanasiou was going to routinely play in their top-six his arbitration award was going to be too expensive.
Still, losing those draft picks and only getting a handful of games out of him hurts. The Oilers have several strong prospects but could have used the picks for a different trade upgrade this offseason. Instead, Athanasiou will enter the free agent market as a young, talented forward that could be a difference-maker in the right situation.
If they come cheap enough, AA and Benning would fill the two remaining holes on the Pens roster. A decent third pair D man to play with Matheson. And a third line winger/center to play with winger/center Jared McCann, but one with real speed and upside.
As an Oilers fan, i feel bad for McD and Draisaitl to have to play on a team with a history of incompetent management. Darryl Katz needs to grow some balls and fire Nicholson and company. Imagine if they had quality management like Colorado, Tampa Bay etc….
Kenny Holland. Lolz.
Holland is a joke
Holland and Nicholson need to go. Stat. From an Oilers fan.
The pick of Holloway was a waste. If he was their target they should have traded down like the fLames did.
Holloway looks like a great pick. His floor is a 3rd liner, with the upside of a top 6 forward with some size. Great skater, good hands. Destroyed the AJHL, was second youngest player in NCAA, and started to really come around in the last half of the season.
Holloway>>>Zary
LOL, destroyed the Alberta junior league not the OHL or WHL!! You probably thought Chiarelli was a good GM too….and trading 2 second round picks for AA was a disaster and everybody knew it but Holland and the rest of the Edm dummies thought differently…..
Holloway’s ceiling is 3C not his floor. If you think this was a good pick you need to share some of what you are taking. Its a pissed away pick like the 2 2nd’s and Gagner for AA. Rather have Gagner than AA.
Nicholson and Holland still cleaning up the mess the old boys oilers club left. reality anyone with options wants nothing to do with deadmonton. even mcdavid is not enough to attract people.
The Athanasiou trade was bad, since the Oilers could have used the draft picks to trade for an impact player. It is good that the Oilers aren’t going to qualify Athanasiou and Benning.
Same stuff, different GM, for Edmonton.
Holland is as bad as Chia.
wreckage, you are correct!!
Not even remotely close…Chia would have signed AA for 5M. It was a gamble that didn’t pay off and they did the correct thing to walk away. The one that will hurt is Benning. Solid NHL DMan which they so badly need. Well that and a binafide starter. Waiting for the show to drop that sends Miko and a top prospect away for either a decent playable NHL DMan and or a wing. Then sign a FA goaltender and really start watching this team perform. Oh and a player or two that want to compete. The lack of give a damn was apparent in the qualifying round. That and the coach rejigging lines that worked perfectly well for the last portion of the regular season. Then Tippett in his infinate wisdom waited till the last 10 mins of an Elimination game to go back to what should have been the lines to begin with. Not Holland’s fault the coach made his lines the way he did. Not all on the coach though just overall what we expect to see from this team. Hurry up Holland and dig us out of the mess you inherited. #theresalwaysnextyear