Oilers Place Leon Draisaitl On Long-Term Injured Reserve
The Oilers were expected to eventually move star center Leon Draisaitl to long-term injured reserve after it was announced he’ll be shut down for the rest of the regular season with a lower-body injury. That’s now happened, per a team announcement, and they’ve used their newfound cap space to recall winger Roby Jarventie from AHL Bakersfield in the corresponding move.
As the ever-durable Draisaitl gears up for the longest absence of his career at one of the worst possible times, the Oilers had just a few days left to be eligible for cap relief by placing him on LTIR. They have 28 days left in their regular season, and there has to be at least 24 days or 10 games – the LTIR minimums – left on the regular-season calendar to initiate an LTIR placement.
Edmonton is now over the cap by nearly $2.5MM, but with Draisaitl now generating some relief in addition to the previously LTIR-bound Colton Dach, Mattias Janmark, and Curtis Lazar, the Oilers’ LTIR pool is now at almost $7MM, leaving them $3.3MM in current cap space after Jarventie’s recall, per PuckPedia.
With all those names sidelined, the 23-year-old Jarventie should be ticketed for his first NHL appearance since debuting with the Senators in November 2023. An early second-round pick in the 2020 draft, he was traded to Edmonton in the 2024 offseason for Xavier Bourgault, but he missed all but two AHL games last season due to knee surgery.
Jarventie initially planned to return home to Finland with Tappara early last offseason, but ended up accepting a two-way extension from the Oilers in June. That decision has proved fruitful for both parties. The 6’2″, 184-lb Jarventie hasn’t clicked at the near point-per-game rate he did in the minors before his injury, but he’s back to at least being a serviceable producer. In 52 outings for Bakersfield, he has 17 goals and 36 points with a +12 rating. That’s good for fifth on the team in scoring.
Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl Expected To Miss Remaining Regular Season
The Edmonton Oilers will be missing major firepower for Tuesday night’s divisional matchup against the San Jose Sharks. Superstar Leon Draisaitl has been declared out for the matchup due to a lower-body injury sustained in Sunday’s win over the Nashville Predators. Draisaitl left that game in the first period after taking a hard bump from Predators winger Ozzy Wiesblatt. No update was provided after the game.
After announcing that he would miss Tuesday night’s game, the Oilers released an additional statement sharing that Draisaitl will have to miss the remaining regular season. He will not need surgery for the injury and should be available for the start of playoffs, general manager Stan Bowman told Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman.
This news will be a major blow to the Oilers offense as they look to seal their spot in the top-three of the Pacific Division. Draisaitl has stayed red-hot since Edmonton returned from the Olympic break. He has six goals and 17 points in his last 10 games, bringing his year-long totals up to 35 goals and 97 points in just 65 games. The 30 year old ranks second on the Oilers in scoring behind Connor McDavid, who has already reached 114 points in 68 games. The two are one of the best duos in the league whether they’re playing alongside each other or not – making Edmonton’s task of replacing Draisaitl that much more challenging.
Max Jones will step into the lineup to fill Draisaitl’s hole. Jones has appeared in nine NHL games, and scored one point, this season. He has also racked up 10 goals, 18 points, and 61 penalty minutes in 39 AHL games. He is a veteran of 293 NHL games with 66 points, split evenly, to show for it. Jones should assume a bottom-line role, while Vasily Podkolzin and Matthew Savoie move up the lineup to bridge the top-six. Podkolzin has three points in his last six games and 30 points on the year, while Savoie has two points in his last two games and 27 points in total. The two should keep play moving just enough to earn Edmonton’s other star talent – McDavid, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and Zach Hyman – scoring chances. Meanwhile the Oilers brass will hold their breath until a clearer timeline for Draisaitl’s return becomes available. The team expects to have updates before the weekend.
If that will be enough to sustain Edmonton’s offense across their remaining 14 games will be a larger question. The Oilers have scored the second-most goals in the NHL (238) behind only the Colorado Avalanche (249). Much of that scoring came from the one-two punch that is McDavid and Draisaitl. Without one of those hooks, the Oilers will need to look towards Hyman to make up for short-term scoring. This could also be a major opportunity for Savoie or Isaac Howard to step up as scoring pieces, after quieter starts to their pro careers than many expected.
Latest On Leon Draisaitl
The Oilers are a tale of two extremes, surrendering 232 goals which has them right among the worst in the league, but simultaneously sitting second in ones forced with 238. As a result they’ve ended up perfectly in the middle of the league, 16th, and third in the Pacific.
Edmonton hosts a possible playoff-snatcher in San Jose tomorrow night. Apparently set to do so without Draisaitl, they must shore things up defensively. Giving up 3.4 goals per game, simply out-scoring their issues will be much more difficult. It’s a feeling not foreign to the Oilers throughout the Connor McDavid/Draisaitl era, but at some point, something has to give if they’ll make a third straight run and finally get over the hump.
Latest On Draisaitl, Nugent-Hopkins
A potentially major storyline has emerged tonight as Oilers superstar Leon Draisaitl left tonight against Nashville, noted by Ryan Rishaug of TSN. The team has still yet to confirm his status, but he did not return to start the second or third period.
Oilers Name Connor Ingram Starter
The Edmonton Oilers have a new starting goalie. According to TSN’s Ryan Rishaug, the Oilers have named Connor Ingram the team’s starter moving forward, replacing Tristan Jarry for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, Ingram, while not producing earth-shattering numbers, is the Oilers’ best option to turn to. Over 20 games this season, the 28-year-old veteran has collected a 9-6-2 record with a .891 SV% and 2.79 GAA. Still, especially as Edmonton approaches the playoffs, they’ll need to find a plan for Jarry to regain his confidence unless Ingram takes his game to another level.
Oilers Place Colton Dach On LTIR, Recall Max Jones
The Oilers added some grit to the bottom of their lineup earlier this month when they acquired Colton Dach from Chicago (along with Jason Dickinson for Andrew Mangiapane and a first-round pick). However, they’ll have to wait a while yet for him to really make his mark. The team announced today (Twitter link) that they’ve placed Dach on LTIR. In a corresponding move, winger Max Jones has been recalled from AHL Bakersfield.
Dach sustained the injury on Tuesday against Colorado, exiting after just two shifts. He played in three games after the swap, recording an assist in his second game with Edmonton. The 23-year-old played in 53 contests with Chicago before the move, notching three goals and six assists along with 189 hits in a little under 12 minutes per game.
It’s unclear how long Dach’s undisclosed injury will keep him out for but the LTIR placement means he’ll miss at least 10 games and 24 days, backdated from when the injury occurred. That means he’s out for the remainder of the month at an absolute minimum, hardly ideal as he’s set to become a restricted free agent this summer.
Dach’s LTIR placement gives Edmonton an extra $825K in its LTIR pool. That, coupled with the minimal space they already had, was enough to add Jones and his $1MM price tag to the roster. However, their LTIR pool is down to just $300K of full-season space, per PuckPedia.
This is the second recall of the season for Jones and his first of 2026, with his previous stint coming back in December. The 28-year-old had a goal and an assist in eight games on the fourth line over that first stint, meaning he’s only two appearances away from needing to clear waivers again to return to Bakersfield. Jones, a pending unrestricted free agent, has been reasonably productive with the Condors, potting ten goals and eight assists in 38 games so far this season.
Canucks, Oilers Swap Josh Bloom And Jayden Grubbe
With Friday representing the AHL’s trade deadline, which also sets roster eligibility for the rest of the season, there have been a handful of moves made in recent days. The Canucks and Oilers were among them, with the latter announcing that they’ve acquired winger Josh Bloom in exchange for center Jayden Grubbe.
Bloom was a third-round pick by Buffalo back in 2021 but never played in their system. Instead, he was flipped to Vancouver near the trade deadline two years later in exchange for blueliner Riley Stillman. Since then, Bloom has primarily played at the ECHL level, getting into 70 games over parts of three seasons compared to half as many at the AHL level. This season, the 22-year-old has 15 goals and 13 assists in 19 games with ECHL Kalamazoo but has been limited to just one goal in 19 appearances with AHL Abbotsford. Bloom is a pending restricted free agent and will need a qualifying offer in June for his rights to be retained.
That’s the exact situation that Grubbe also finds himself in. Originally a third-round pick by the Rangers (65th overall) in 2021, New York opted not to sign him and flipped his rights to Edmonton two years later. The 23-year-old played exclusively in the AHL with Bakersfield over his first two professional seasons, notching nine goals and 24 assists in 129 games. However, this season, he hasn’t seen any action at the AHL level, instead playing with ECHL Fort Wayne, where he notched seven goals and a dozen assists in 28 contests.
Since the swap occurred after the NHL’s trade deadline, both Bloom and Grubbe are ineligible to be recalled for the remainder of the season.
Oilers Explored Moving Darnell Nurse
The Oilers were quiet on deadline day, doing their bidding earlier in the week by acquiring Colton Dach, Jason Dickinson, and Connor Murphy in a pair of deals with the Blackhawks. That doesn’t mean they didn’t discuss other options. One of them was opening the door to trying to move struggling defender Darnell Nurse and his anchor contract, David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period reports.
While nothing got close, it doesn’t appear the Oilers are done toying with the idea. “I can’t pinpoint how deep trade talks actually went, but that’s a name to watch this summer, [no-movement clause] and all,” Pagnotta wrote.
Nurse’s contract has been a point of contention in Edmonton nearly from the moment it was signed. In August 2021, he landed an eight-year, $74MM commitment with a $9.25MM cap hit that didn’t kick in until the 2022-23 campaign. He was coming off a career performance, finishing seventh in Norris Trophy voting, but it came in a much smaller sample than usual during the shortened 2021 COVID year. In the years since, the 31-year-old has never come close to sniffing the 0.64 points per game rate he set that year and has seen his possession impacts consistently decline as well.
The deal also includes no-move protection for the life of the deal, as Pagnotta discusses. That means the Oilers can’t waive or trade him without his approval. That full protection runs through next season. On July 1, 2027, the NMC remains in effect, preventing them from waiving him, but the full trade restriction gets dropped. He’ll then have a modified no-trade clause with only a 10-team no-trade list for the final three seasons of the deal. That removes one obstacle toward moving him if it’s something they still want to explore in the 2027 offseason, but getting someone to take him on at his full cap hit without a significant sweetener will remain prohibitive, considering his continuous decline, even in a rising cap environment.
Edmonton could retain some money to make the rest of his contract more appealing. That’s far preferable to a buyout, which, while technically possible, is nonsensical. The structure of Nurse’s contract ensures he’s paid mostly in signing bonuses from 2026-27 onward, meaning a buyout won’t save them any more than $1MM on average over the next four years.
This season, Nurse has seen his workload drop to third-pairing duties at even-strength behind Mattias Ekholm and Jake Walman among the Oilers’ contingent of lefties. In 64 games, he has a 7-13–20 scoring line with a -13 rating in 64 games. His 0.31 points per game are his lowest since his age-21 season, as is his 20:52 average time on ice. He’s seen a steep drop in deployment from both special teams units, no longer a factor at all on Edmonton’s power play, while averaging less than a minute and a half per game shorthanded. His 48.3% Corsi share at 5-on-5 also trails that of Ekholm’s, Walman’s, and Evan Bouchard‘s despite the most sheltered offensively favorable deployment of his career.
Oilers Recall Josh Samanski Under Emergency Conditions
The Edmonton Oilers have recalled forward Josh Samanski under emergency conditions. This call-up will not count against Edmonton’s remaining regular season recalls. Samanski was moved to the AHL ahead of the Trade Deadline to ensure his eligibility for the 2026 Calder Cup Playoffs.
The Oilers could face a hole in their fourth-line center spot if Adam Henrique is ruled out of Sunday’s matchup against the Vegas Golden Knights. Henrique is a game-time decision due to an undisclosed injury per head coach Kris Knoblauch. The Oilers are already relying on trade acquisitions Jason Dickinson and Colton Dach to fill roles in their bottom-six and could now lean on another rookie to shore up their depth.
Samanski filled a fourth-line role in Edmonton’s March 3rd win over the Ottawa Senators but hasn’t had an extended tenure in the NHL since early-February. He played the first five games of his NHL career after a late-January call-up and scored two assists. Samanski has made a much bigger impact in a top-six center role with the AHL’s Bakersfield Condors, where he’s racked up 31 points in 45 games this season. He also represented Team Germany at the 2026 Winter Olympics, scoring two points in five games.
Samanski is in his first professional season in North America after spending the last four seasons in Germany’s DEL. He totaled 40 goals and 93 points in 193 games at Germany’s top-level. That set a club record for U23 scoring with the Straubing Tigers, exceeding the previous record by 29 points. Samanski is still searching for his spark in the NHL but should still provide solid depth if Edmonton needs to call on him.
AHL Assignments: 3/6/25
Today’s trade deadline also has minor-league implications. Players must be on an AHL roster at 2:00 p.m. Central in order to be eligible to play in the Calder Cup Playoffs. As such, teams will be ferrying a large number of waiver-exempt players to the minors this morning and afternoon before recalling them before the end of the league day for cap counting at 4:00 p.m. That allows them to bypass the new rule that players must play at least one game in the minors after being reassigned before they’re eligible for a recall again.
Here’s the rundown of today’s reassignments that will be announced during the blizzard of other moves today:
- The Flames will ferry winger Matvei Gridin to the Calgary Wranglers, Ryan Pike of Flames Nation reports. The 2024 #28 overall pick is in his first professional season and is already beginning to look like a natural fit in the Flames’ top nine, posting seven points through his first 18 NHL games while averaging 14:18 of ice time per night. Gridin’s 4.17 shot attempts per game are fourth on the team after Rasmus Andersson and MacKenzie Weegar were traded away. He’s also got 10 goals and 29 points in 36 games for the Wranglers, but with the Flames’ roster thinning out as they sell pieces off, he’ll be up in the NHL for the stretch run before returning to the playoff-bound Wranglers after the regular season ends.
- The Jets announced they’ve sent winger Walker Duehr and defender Isaak Phillips to AHL Manitoba. Both may find their way back down to Manitoba on a full-time basis before the end of the season as Winnipeg gets some of its IR-bound players back in the lineup, but for now, they’ll serve as depth pieces for the Jets as they potentially subtract more talents from their roster today.
- The Mammoth sent defenseman Dmitriy Simashev to Tucson, per PuckPedia. The 2023 sixth overall pick got into the Utah lineup for the first time since December last night. The rookie has been exceptional in the minors but has just one assist with a -9 rating through his first 25 career NHL outings.
- The Blackhawks assigned defender Ethan Del Mastro to Rockford, per PuckPedia. He’ll be back up after being recalled earlier in the week to replace Connor Murphy on the roster after he was dealt to the Oilers.
- The Penguins have sent down winger Avery Hayes to make him post-season eligible, per Seth Rorabaugh of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The 23-year-old rookie has two goals through his first six NHL contests over the past several weeks, both of which came in his debut.
- The Avalanche have demoted winger Gavin Brindley to the AHL’s Colorado Eagles. Brindley is in his first full NHL season after being acquired from the Columbus Blue Jackets last year, scoring six goals and 12 points in 47 games, averaging 9:51 of ice time per game.
- The Rangers are making sure that AHL Hartford has reinforcements for the playoffs. New York has reassigned forwards Jaroslav Chmelar and Juuso Pärssinen. The former scored the first goal of his NHL career in a lopsided victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs.
- According to a team announcement, the Vancouver Canucks have reassigned netminder Nikita Tolopilo and defenseman Cole Clayton to AHL Abbotsford. Tolopilo has been a mainstay between the pipes for Vancouver over the last little while, managing a 3-5-2 record in nine starts this season with a .901 SV% and 3.27 GAA.
- Unlikely to make the playoffs this season, the Panthers are making sure the cupboards are stocked for the Charlotte Checkers’ playoff run. The Panthers have reassigned Tobias Björnfot and Sandis Vilmanis, allowing them to remain eligible for the postseason.
- The Kraken have reassigned forwards Jacob Melanson and Ryan Winterton to the AHL’s Coachella Valley Firebirds. The pair have combined for four goals and 19 points in 82 games for Seattle this season.
- According to Bill Hoppe of the Times Herald, the Buffalo Sabres have assigned Zach Metsa to the AHL’s Rochester Americans in a paper transaction. Metsa, 27, is in his first full NHL season, scoring two goals and four points in 31 games, averaging 9:45 of ice time per game.
- The best team in the AHL may be even better during the playoffs. To maintain their eligibility for the postseason, the Grand Rapids Griffins announced that captain Dominik Shine and defenseman Axel Sandin Pellikka have been reassigned in a paper transaction.
- According to Charlie O’Connor of PHLY Sports, the Flyers have reassigned Denver Barkey and Adam Ginning to AHL Lehigh Valley. Barkey has been an encouraging story of late, scoring two goals and 10 points in his first 26 games of NHL action.
- Murat Ates of The Athletic confirmed that the Winnipeg Jets reassigned defenseman Elias Salomonsson to retain his postseason eligibility. Salomonsson has been relatively disappointing for AHL Manitoba this season, registering one goal and nine points in 29 contests.
- Pushing back on the earlier report today indicating that the Canucks had recalled Ty Mueller, Brendan Batchelor of Sportsnet shared that he won’t be joining the Canucks. Vancouver will run with a bare-bones roster tonight against the Blackhawks.
- Missing the playoffs for the first time in a decade, the Maple Leafs are making sure AHL Toronto has additional firepower for their postseason run. According to Lance Hornby of the Toronto Sun, the Maple Leafs have reassigned Easton Cowan and Jacob Quillan in a paper transaction. Despite being a higher-regarded prospect, Cowan only has two games of AHL experience.
- As expected, the Edmonton Oilers have reassigned forward Josh Samanski to the AHL’s Bakersfield Condors to ensure his postseason eligibility. Samanski has been exceptional for AHL Bakersfield this year, registering eight goals and 31 points in 43 games with a +6 rating.
This page will be updated throughout the day.