Bowman: Oilers unlikely to offer professional tryouts

The Edmonton Oilers have never been shy when it comes to signing players to professional tryouts.

While they didn’t bring in any players last year, forward Mike Hoffman and defenceman Travis Dermott got invites to training camp in 2024, with the latter signing a one-year deal. He’d play just 10 games before being waived and claimed by the Minnesota Wild.

In 2023, Adam Erne, Brandon Sutter, and Sam Gagner came to camp, with Gagner signing a one-year deal, sticking with the team through the run to the Stanley Cup final. He played in 28 regular season games, scoring five goals and 10 points, but didn’t dress for a playoff game.

In 2022, they invited defenceman Jason Demers, who would play one game with the Oilers to hit career game No. 700, while bringing in winger Jake Virtanen was nothing short of a mess.

Who could forget the success that was Alex Chiasson in 2018? He would score 22 goals and 38 points that year, sticking around town for three seasons.

But any Oilers fan hopeful the team would do the same this year may want to exhale. General manager Stan Bowman joined Oilers Now’s Bob Stauffer Monday, saying the team was unlikely to bring anybody into camp.

“We’ve had some conversations about that, but there’s certainly a lot of guys looking for (a tryout),” said Bowman. “I’ve had a lot of inbound calls the last few days here. Agents are working hard.

“There’s still some decent players out there that are trying to find landing spots. I’m not sure if we’re going to go down that road. We’re not overflowing with players, but we also don’t have a shortage of players. We’re in that mode where yeah, we probably could try to bring a guy in on a tryout — not the worst idea.

“There’s just not a lot of time this year to really even give evaluations.”

A shorter training camp, and a pre-season cut to just four games limit how much time teams can look at external players, Bowman said.

“You figure your main roster is going to play those two games, and then you really have two other games, really,” he said. “You could get to know them a bit, watch them practice, but it’s a tough year for that.

“I wouldn’t rule it out, I just think that I wouldn’t be waiting for the news to break that we’re adding new players.”

While winger Matt Savoie was injured this summer and is expected to miss some time, there’s also a plethora of players the team has added who can fill depth roles. Aku Raty, Eduards Tralmaks, and Mathieu Joseph were all signed since last spring, all of whom will be in competition, and that doesn’t even account for others like Quinn Hutson, Viljami Marjala, Owen Michaels, Josh Samanski, and Max Jones who could all make arguments for making the team.

The Oilers already have enough competition on the blue line, too, with eight players on one-way contracts in Evan Bouchard, Mattias Ekholm, Jake Walman, Connor Murphy, Ryan Shea, Ty Emberson, Shakir Mukhamadullin, and Spencer Stastney competing.

Things could change, as Bowman highlighted, but there seems to be no need to hold your breath.