Earlier this week, the Oilers opted to drop down to a minimum-sized roster in order to get cap-compliant to activate winger Kailer Yamamoto from LTIR. As luck would have it, the flu bug hit the team for Friday's game against the Rangers, and the Oilers wound up playing short a player as Klim Kostin was unable to suit up. That’s not a viable situation for a playoff contender to have to navigate, so there has been an expectation that they will open up some cap space.
Jesse Puljujarvi has been widely speculated as the eventual cap casualty, but for the time being, they haven’t found a trade that works for them. However, Sportsnet’s Mark Spector reports there is a belief that the Hurricanes have indicated that they are willing to move winger Ondrej Kase (currently on LTIR with a concussion) to Edmonton for Puljujarvi but only after the Finnish winger has cleared waivers. That would allow Carolina to shuffle him back and forth between the AHL if needed while seeing if a change of scenery could help get him going.
It has been quite a fall for the 24-year-old who hasn’t come close to living up to his draft billing as 2016's fourth overall pick. This season, Puljujarvi has been quite limited offensively, scoring just five goals along with seven assists in 53 games, hardly the type of production they were expecting after he posted 36 points in 65 contests just last season. It’s also hardly the type of return they were hoping for from someone carrying a $3M cap hit.
Clearly, GM Ken Holland still believes he can salvage some sort of positive value for Puljujarvi. Otherwise, he likely would have hit the waiver wire already. If he was to be claimed, they’d free up the full $3M in cap room, and if not, the proposed swap with Carolina would open up $1.5M in regular cap room and $1.5M (Kase’s cap hit) in their LTIR pool. While that wouldn’t be a great return by any stretch, it would give them a bit more flexibility to work with as they either look to add a piece by the March 3 trade deadline or to bring someone back up from AHL Bakersfield to avoid having to play short a player. We’ll find out soon enough if Holland is able to find a better option for Puljujarvi than this one.
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