February 15, 2023 by Ryan Lotsberg

The idea of Erik Karlsson in an Edmonton Oilers uniform passing pucks to Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl is exciting! If you’re wondering why this trade hasn’t happened yet, consider the complications of a Karlsson trade to the Oilers right now. There are two components to a potential Karlsson deal: the contracts involved to make the money work, and the draft picks and prospects to be involved.

The Oilers are in a money in, money out situation this season. They can’t afford to absorb Karlsson’s $11.5 million cap hit. In fact, they can’t afford to take on any salary at all. The Sharks would need to retain money on Karlsson and take players back from the Oilers. San Jose can retain a maximum of $5.75 million on Karlsson. There’s a direct relationship between the asking price for Karlsson and the amount of money they would retain. The more they retain, the more expensive the trade will get for the Oilers.

The Sharks only have $984,167 in cap space according to CapFriendly, so the Sharks could afford to have their cap spending increase by that amount as a result of this deal. The Sharks have 49 out of a possible 50 NHL contracts on their books. They can only add one player, so the Oilers could only send them one more player than they get from the Sharks. The combination of needing to send a large sum of money to San Jose to be able to afford Karlsson and the Sharks only being able to add one more player than they give up could help the Oilers move an undesirable contract.

Karlsson would be an upgrade over every Oilers defenceman, but he’s a right handed offensive defenceman that can run a powerplay. Tyson Barrie is a poor man’s Karlsson, so it makes all the sense in the world to include him in this trade. Including Barrie’s $4.5 million would make the financial aspect of this trade easier to make happen. The Oilers would need to send at least another $1.25 million to the Sharks if Barrie is involved. That would be as simple as including Mattias Janmark or Derek Ryan.

If the goal is to send the Sharks as much money back as possible to minimize the price, then it would make sense to include Kailer Yamamoto or Jesse Puljujarvi. Both players are having down years. Yamamoto hasn’t produced in his limited healthy time this season, and he has another year left on his deal. Puljujarvi’s plight has been well documented, and he’s got a $3 million qualifying offer coming in the summer. No GM in their right mind would give him that right now, so an acquiring team would risk losing him for nothing this summer. Warren Foegele is another option, but he has also underproduced in relation to his cap hit. These players might not reduce the price on Karlsson like I suggested based on their low market value.

Evan Bouchard’s potential inclusion in this deal is the most controversial piece of this puzzle. Bouchard is a star in the making. He will never be as good as Karlsson, but Bouchard has top pairing potential. The hard question the Oilers need to ask themselves is how high is Bouchard’s ceiling? If they think his perceived lack of urgency on defence will prevent him from becoming a top pairing defenceman, then they wouldn’t worry about including him. If they think he can be a cost controlled top pairing defenceman for the next eight years and then be an impact Oiler beyond that, then they shouldn’t let San Jose have him.

It would be really hard to include both Barrie and Bouchard. The right side would be Karlsson, Cody Ceci, and Vincent Desharnais in that scenario. The puck would become much slower more often when Karlsson isn’t on the ice. That would be top heavy, much like the forward group. Desharnais has been solid in a sheltered role, but the sample size is small. We don’t know how he would handle more minutes against tougher competition yet. Barrie and Bouchard only add up to $5,363,333, so they would need to add a third roster player to make the money work.

Related: Should the Oilers trade for Erik Karlsson?

Here are some other combinations of players that would work money wise depending on how much San Jose would retain on Karlsson, keeping in mind that the players with cap hits over $5 million likely won’t be involved in this trade:

Foegele (or Kulak) & Puljujarvi: $5.75 million

Ceci & Foegele: $6 million

Foegele, Puljujarvi & Bouchard: $6,613,333

Foegele, Puljujarvi & Janmark: $7 million

Barrie & Yamamoto: $7.6 million

Barrie, Foegele, and Janmark: $8.5 million

Barrie, Yamamoto & Foegele: $10.35 million

Barrie, Ceci & Foegele: $10.5 million

Keep in mind that if the Oilers give San Jose three players, then they will have to take a second player back. The combination of Ceci, Janmark and Ryan adds up to $5.75 million, but that wouldn’t work because the Sharks would have to send the Oilers another player and the Sharks wouldn’t be able to retain enough on Karlsson to make that math work. 

Steven Lorentz, local product Noah Gregor, and former Oiler Matt Benning would all be cheaper options that could offset the money and fit into the bottom part of the Oilers roster to replace some of the depth lost in the deal. Injured players Luke Kunin and Radek Simek might be of interest to the Oilers as well. Anybody with a cap hit less than Gregor’s $950k could also work.

We also have to think about the Oilers’s active roster situation. Once Yamamoto returns, the Oilers will be forced to use a 21 man roster. They will be in a dollar in, dollar out situation at that point. If the Oilers give the Sharks one more player than they get back, then their active roster would be at 20 players with no cap space. That would prevent them from having an extra skater with the team in case of surprise lineup changes on game days. Placing a player on LTIR would be the only way to get cap space to bring another player up from Bakersfield, unless the recall is on an emergency basis. Either that or the Oilers would play short-handed.

Then there’s the opportunity cost of the picks and prospects that would be involved. I wouldn’t move Dylan Holloway or Philip Broberg. I would be wary of trading Xavier Bourgault because the Oilers are thin at right wing and he’s the insurance policy for Puljujarvi and Yamamoto. I really like Desharnais as well, so I’d be hesitant to move him. The rest of the lot would be fair game for Karlsson.

This year’s first round is deep. A team might get a star player in the twenties in this draft. If the Oilers make the final four, then the pick will be so late that it wouldn’t hurt to sacrifice it. However, if they lose in the first round or miss the playoffs after trading the pick, then they might regret it. I wouldn’t hesitate to include any other pick, and I’d likely get over it if the Oilers traded the 2023 first rounder for Karlsson.

Related: Do Big Trade Deadline Deals Correlate With Winning Stanley Cups?

The question is do they value having a steady stream of players on entry level deals contributing over the next five to seven years, or do they value Karlsson’s potential impact more? No team can be successful consistently for a long time without that flow of young players contributing, so the scouts would need to be great at finding diamonds in the rough if a combination of top prospects and first round picks were to disappear.

The other thing to consider is that Karlsson has a full no movement clause in his contract, so he would need to waive it to be traded anywhere. I suspect that he would waive it to come to Edmonton since Jason Gregor said that Ken Holland has made San Jose GM Mike Grier an offer.

This isn’t a deal that would happen overnight if it were to happen at all. The complexity of the deal lowers its odds of happening, but it’s certainly a distinct possibility.