Don’t read much into these Oilers roster moves
March 2, 2026
March 2, 2026 by Ryan Lotsberg
Monday is turning out to be a busy day for Edmonton Oilers GM Stan Bowman. Andrew Mangiapane and Alec Regula cleared waivers, and they were subsequently sent down to the Bakersfield Condors. Josh Samanski and Ike Howard were recalled.
Related: Don’t read much into these Oilers roster moves
I had literally just finished my post about those moves when I read that the Oilers have acquired Connor Murphy from the Chicago Blackhawks for a 2028 second round pick. The Blackhawks will retain half of Murphy’s $4.4 million cap hit for the remainder of this season.
If all the reports about the Oilers looking to add a right-handed defenceman weren’t enough to make you believe that, then Regula being sent down should’ve been enough. That was a clear tell because the Oilers would only have had six defencemen on the active roster otherwise. Bowman didn’t waste any time in closing the deal on Murphy, whom he also acquired while he was the GM of the Blackhawks.
There’s nothing spectacular about Murphy’s game, but the 32-year old is a reliable presence on the back end. He’s got great size at 6’4”, 212 lbs. This isn’t the mobile, puck moving defenceman that so many teams covet. He’s more of the shutdown type. Given the Oilers’ struggles to keep the puck out of their net, that player type makes some sense for the Oilers right now.
According to PuckIQ, Murphy plays 27% of his five-on-five minutes against elite competition, and he hasn’t fared all that well. The underlying numbers aren’t pretty for Murphy, but they rarely do for anyone playing on a bad team. Regardless of whether the numbers suggest it’s a good idea or not, Murphy will be tasked with stabilizing the second pairing for the Oilers.
The biggest change this will affect on the Oilers defence is the utilization of Jake Walman. Walman has struggled this season, and he has predominantly played on his weak side. His ability to play his weak side was supposed to be a plus for acquiring him at last year’s trade deadline, but that hasn’t panned out well to date. With Murphy now set to slot in on the right side, Walman will be able to slide to his natural position.
That gives the Oilers a solid left side with Walman, Mattias Ekholm, and Darnell Nurse. The first and most obvious thought is to play Murphy with Nurse, but I’m not certain that’s how it will start based on the defensive combinations at Oilers practice today:
Stastney is the likely new organizational number seven defenceman, so he would likely come out of the lineup. I’m salivating at the potential of a shutdown pairing of Ekholm and Murphy. That would bump Nurse down to the third pairing with Emberson despite how the pairings were listed by the media at practice today.
As usual, I’m sure that the Oilers will use the remaining regular season games to experiment with their pairings before the playoffs start. Ekholm and Evan Bouchard rarely get separated for long, so I’m sure Nurse and Walman will both get their chances to play with Murphy as well.
Murphy should also help the Oilers penalty kill. It has struggled lately. The Blackhawks have the number one penalty kill in the NHL (85.7%), and Murphy is a big part of that. Murphy leads the Blackhawks with 177:16 in penalty killing time this season. Bouchard leads the Oilers with 115:01.
It needs to be noted that the Oilers don’t have the cap space to formally complete this trade before 3 pm MST today after the recalls of Samanski and Howard. Those recalls needed to happen because they needed to be on the Oilers active roster when Mattias Janmark was placed on LTIR today to prevent the average value of their performance bonuses from being added to their cap hits should the team choose to recall them later in the season. I expect both Samanski and Howard to be back in Bakersfield for Friday’s game so they canbe eligible for the AHL playoffs. My guess would be that Howard will be sent down to accommodate Murphy, and Samanski will play for the Oilers on Tuesday.
Assuming that Samanski and Howard will not be on the Oilers active roster on Friday as I expect, the Oilers will have $1,164,031 to spend before Friday’s trade deadline. The Oilers play on Friday night. That would mean the Oilers would either have to play with eleven forwards for Friday’s game, call someone aside from Samanski up, or trade for a new forward.
Note that that number is slightly above $1.15 million, which is the maximum amount of one player’s contract that can be buried in the AHL. They could recall Mangiapane for Friday’s game if they don’t trade him before then.
If the Oilers can find a taker for Mangiapane, they could basically replace him with a forward at the same cap hit. If not, a new face would have to be cheap.
I’ll have more on who they could target later in the week.
