November 19, 2024 by Ryan Lotsberg

The Edmonton Oilers claimed Kasperi Kapanen off waivers from the St. Louis Blues on Tuesday. The 28-year old right winger has one goal in ten games for the Blues this season, and 209 points in 470 NHL games for the Blues, the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Kapanen has one twenty-goal season to his credit, which came back in his sophomore season in 2018-19. His most productive offensive season came in the COVID shortened 2020-21 season where he got 30 points in 40 games for the Penguins. His production dropped slightly in the next two seasons before being waived by the Penguins in February 2023, but he was still producing at approximately a half of a point per game. The Blues claimed him, and he put up fourteen points in 23 games down the stretch. The 2023-24 season didn’t go so swimmingly for Kapanen though. His production fell to 22 points in 73 games. 

The Blues made Kapanen a healthy scratch multiple times recently, and they needed to clear a roster spot to be able to activate Robert Thomas from the IR, so Kapanen became the odd man out. The Blues added some young forwards to their team this season including Dylan Holloway, Alexandre Texier, and Alexei Toropchenko. Kapanen simply got passed on the depth chart by too many younger players.

That begs the question of why the Oilers would want to bring Kapanen aboard? Kapanen is appealing because of his speed. The Oilers lost a lot of speed with Holloway, Ryan McLeod, and Warren Foegele all exiting the organization this summer, and this move is clearly an attempt to address that issue.

The other reason to bring Kapanen on now is the injury to Viktor Arvidsson. The Oilers have deployed a roster with only eleven forwards and seven defencemen in the four games that Kapanen has missed to date. That was a signature move of former Oilers head coach Jay Woodcroft; but current Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch isn’t a fan of the eleven and seven lineup.

Then Darnell Nurse got hurt in Saturday’s game against the Maple Leafs. The Oilers called up Josh Brown in the wake of Nurse’s injury, but that didn’t solve the eleven and seven issue.

Oilers GM Stan Bowman could’ve called up Noah Philp, who played three games for the Oilers earlier in the season. Philp didn’t look out of place in the NHL, but the organization clearly wants Philp to keep playing in the AHL, either because they don’t think he’s quite ready for the NHL yet, or because they want him playing meaningful minutes for the Bakersfield Condors.

Related: Noah Philp lives out his NHL dream

The same logic could be used on Matthew Savoie. Savoie has had a decent start to his season in Bakersfield (9 points in 13 games); but the organization is clearly sticking to their plan of having Savoie develop in the AHL this season. That’s the right decision in my opinion.

I also don’t think that he was expecting Arvidsson to be out for as long as he has been out, which may have necessitated adding a forward to the roster. He didn’t feel comfortable with the internal options, and a cheap right winger with almost 500 games of NHL experience became available, so he made the claim.

Kapanen will likely start on the fourth line when he makes his Oilers debut on Thursday against the Minnesota Wild. He averaged 1:11 of ice time on the penalty kill with the Blues, so he could be used on the penalty kill in Edmonton. It never hurts to add some speed to a penalty kill, and the Oilers penalty kill needs all the help it can get (although it has been better in the last week and a bit).

Kapanen carries a $1 million cap hit this season, and he will be an unrestricted free agent after this season. According to PuckPedia, the Oilers currently have $4,307,629 in cap space. They are using a portion of the LTIR relief available to them as a result of Evander Kane’s injury because they called up Brown. 

That puts the Oilers a total of $817,318 over the actual salary cap. They will only need to send one of Brown or Kapanen to the Condors in order to get back under the cap and to start accruing cap space again. In case you are wondering, Kapanen would need to go through waivers again if the Oilers were to decide that they wanted to send him to the Condors. He did not clear waivers, therefore he would need to clear waivers before being sent down to the AHL.

I would anticipate Brown being waived and sent down to the Condors sometime after Saturday’s game against the Rangers. Nurse is expected to be back after the team’s break next week, and they won’t need to carry eight defencemen. The Oilers could accrue cap space during their break by sending Brown down. My guess is that Brown will be waived on Sunday and sent to Bakersfield on Monday.

The Oilers have been playing with the bare minimum twelve forwards all season so far, except for the handful of days where Philp and Drake Cagguila were up while Connor McDavid was injured. Having a thirteenth forward on the roster would give Knoblauch some roster flexibility. He could rest forwards, and he could healthy scratch forwards for performance based reasons. The downside to that flexibility is that it would limit the amount of cap space that the Oilers can accrue, which impacts their ability to add at the trade deadline.

It will be interesting to see what happens once Arvidsson returns to the lineup. If no forward gets waived at that time, then someone will come out of the lineup. Kapanen could be the thirteenth forward. Jeff Skinner has been seeing limited ice time in recent games. Perhaps Knoblauch will opt to send Skinner a message with a healthy scratch. Derek Ryan and Corey Perry are typically on the fourth line, which automatically makes their hold on roster spots tenuous. 

The team at least has some options now after claiming Kapanen.