Edmonton Oilers finally escape purgatory thru brilliant discounts and dumping ugly contract

The fact of the matter is that with Darnell Nurse’s contract on the books last season, Edmonton Oilers GM Stan Bowman and his Edmonton Oilers, including Nurse himself, would have had to have done everything perfect or near perfect in order to win the 2026 Stanley Cup. What would perfect look like? No players with [...]

The fact of the matter is that with Darnell Nurse’s contract on the books last season, Edmonton Oilers GM Stan Bowman and his Edmonton Oilers, including Nurse himself, would have had to have done everything perfect or near perfect in order to win the 2026 Stanley Cup. What would perfect look like? No players with major injuries during the playoffs.

A hot goalie in May and June on a value contract. All the players peaking at the right moment, with top players and role players all bringing their “A” games down the stretch. All of Bowman’s signings, most importantly his big summer splurges on Trent Frederic and Andrew Mangiapane, coming up roses.

Of course, none of that happened. But it was always a long shot. Why was such a high standard of near perfection needed?

Because Edmonton was paying so much money to its top players, it left next to no wiggle room under the NHL’s hard salary cap to fill out the roster with quality support players. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for an NHL team with almost 50 per cent of its cap space devoted to its top four players to win the Stanley Cup. Edmonton top four players took up 48.4 per cent of the Edmonton’s $95.5 cap space last year.

As we see in the chart below, no team has won the Stanley Cup in the 21 years of the cap era that has devoted as much as 48.4 per cent of its cap space to four players. The average Stanley Cup winner paid its top four players 40.5 per cent of the cap. The most a team that has won has paid its top four players is 47.1 per cent, the Anaheim Ducks in 2006-07.

Even if Darnell Nurse had been able to shake off his usual crash in playoff performance in the 2026 playoff run, it would have been highly unusual for the Oilers to win the Cup this past spring. In the two recent seasons when Edmonton got to the Stanley Cup Final, it paid its top four players 43.4 per cent of the cap and 41.2 per cent of the cap. But with Evan Bouchard and Leon Draisaitl’s new contracts kicking in last season.

it shot up to that 48.4 per cent number. Without Nurse this year, however, everything changes. The Oilers will pay their Top 4 just 42.3 per cent of the cap, thanks to McDavid, Draisaitl and Bouchard all taking considerably less than they could have got on the open market, and thanks to GM Stan Bowman’s brilliant success in trading away Darnell Nurse without retaining any money against the cap.

Things are even better next year when Edmonton’s Top 4 will get paid just 38.8 per cent of the cap as things stand now. The Nurse trade along with all those discount superstar contracts have taken Edmonton out of Stanley Cup purgatory. Well done to all involved.

Now Bowman just has to keep spending his cap space wisely. He’s done well so far this summer, though I notice that things often looks much more bright and happy in July on that count than they do in November and December, when we see how the summer signings and acquisitions have worked out.