August 26, 2024 by Ryan Lotsberg

I want to take a minute to clarify something here. When the Edmonton Oilers traded Cody Ceci, some people thought that it was a trade to create the cap space to match Philip Broberg’s offer sheet. That clearly was not the case since Broberg is now a member of the St. Louis Blues.

Some people also thought that the Ceci deal was done to put pressure on Blues general manager Doug Armstrong to get him to agree to making the side deal that saw the Oilers acquire Paul Fischer and a 2028 third round pick in return for not matching the offer sheets. The theory is that they needed the cap space to make Armstrong think that they were going to match Broberg’s offer sheet.

I’ve also seen comments about the lack of wisdom in trading Leon Draisaitl’s good friend during negotiations with the German superstar just to make room to possibly match an overpriced offer sheet for a young and unproven player or to squeeze a prospect and a pick out of the Blues.

That’s not why Ceci was traded. Let me explain in detail.

First of all, listen to Armstrong’s media availability from the day that the Oilers announced that they wouldn’t be matching the offer sheets. “They had access to our second round pick, they had access to our third round pick, they had access to Holloway, and they had access to Broberg; and we had access to none of it… [Oilers GM Stan Bowman] said that we would have to add a piece or two. He and I went to work, and we were able to get that done.” 

When Armstrong was asked to elaborate on why he had to make the extra trade to get Holloway and Broberg, Armstrong said that “Our goal was to get [the] players… when we were talking, [Bowman] said that if we work to a point where that’s agreeable, then we won’t match. Our goal was always to get the players, and to have to add a little bit to the second and the third to reach our goal, we as an organization wanted to do that.”

Armstrong never felt that he was in a position of power. The leverage always belonged to the Oilers in his eyes. Bowman was really smart to ask the Blues for more in that situation. Armstrong was clearly motivated to get Holloway and Broberg, and Bowman worked to increase the return knowing that he had the leverage.

Bowman was quite clear in explaining that this was a business decision. The Oilers wanted to allow themselves the most salary cap flexibility in the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons. The Oilers were $354,167 over the salary cap before the offer sheets were signed. Add Broberg’s cap hit of $4,580,917 to that, and you get a roster that was $4,935,084 over the cap.

The only way to have kept Broberg would’ve been to utilize LTIR for Evander Kane. Bowman explained that they don’t know what Kane’s game plan is in regards to treating and recovering from his injury, so they don’t know if he will be on LTIR to start the season or not.

Let’s play it out as if Kane was going to be on LTIR though. As Bowman explained during his media availability last Tuesday, the Oilers would have to be able to get below the league’s $88 million salary cap in order to activate Kane if he was to become healthy at any point during the season. That means that the Oilers would’ve had to have removed at least $4,935,084 from a 22-man active roster to activate Kane in that scenario.

If Ceci had been traded with no salary cap hit coming back, that would’ve cleared $3.25 million. That’s $1,685,084 shy of the mark. They would’ve had to have played a game shorthanded and used an emergency recall to be able to activate Kane after trading Ceci with no cap hit coming back if they had kept Broberg. The other option would’ve been to trade another significant roster player in addition to Ceci, like Brett Kulak, to be able to activate Kane. 

My point is that moving Ceci alone wouldn’t have created enough room to magically make it easier to keep Broberg. 

What actually happened was that Ceci was traded to the San Jose Sharks along with a 2025 third round pick for Ty Emberson. That saved the Oilers $2.3 million against the cap. So no, the Ceci trade was not a move that made keeping Broberg more possible, and it was not a trade made to scare Armstrong into giving the Oilers more assets.

Related: Oilers trade Ceci to the Sharks

The other critical piece of information here is the timing of the decision to not match the offer sheets. Bowman said that “…once we decided that we weren’t going to match the offer sheets, obviously we knew that we were going to be getting some assets back, so we started having other conversations”. 

Bowman said that he made the decision to not match the offer sheets, AND THEN he started talking to other teams about trades. The decision to not match the offer sheets had already been made before Ceci was traded. So no, Ceci was not moved out to make room to match Broberg in an effort to strong arm Armstrong into adding more to the deal.

The Ceci trade was obviously made to create cap space though. That cap space allowed them to be able to add Vasily Podkolzin as a cheaper potential forward replacement for Holloway. They also brought in Emberson with that cap space. All in all, the Oilers came out with $1.3 million more cap space than they had prior to those trades.

That cap space has offered the Oilers a lot of flexibility. They don’t need to place Kane on LTIR to be cap compliant now. They can accrue cap space over the course of the season, which will allow them to add at the trade deadline, which is important to Bowman and the Oilers.

Bowman also spoke about needing to give the players they currently have a chance to show what they can do. While the team is likely going to add a defenceman on a PTO according to Bob Stauffer, and they’re still exploring options for right-handed defencemen, it sounds like the current group will get plenty of opportunity this fall.

Related: Possible Oilers defence additions

Emberson is a part of that group. Make no mistake about it, the Oilers wouldn’t have paid a third round pick to trade Ceci for Emberson if they didn’t think that Emberson could play. Trading Ceci was a cap dump, but it was more about Emberson than a lot of people realize. Stauffer seems to think that Emberson is a lock to start the season with the team, and I would be inclined to agree. I just don’t know what role he will have yet.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Ty Emberson may turn out to be a bit of a surprise for the @EdmontonOilers
Had a successful season with Kris Knoblauch in 2022-23.
Played some tough minutes in San Jose.
A lock for me to start in EDM and also be a part of the PK.

— Bob Stauffer (@Bob_Stauffer) August 24, 2024

I’ll have more on Emberson later in the week.