Could the Oilers have a new third defensive pairing by next season?

It’s entirely possible that the Edmonton Oilers have a new bottom defence pairing next season — or at the very least swap out one of the two in the pairing.

In a sense, this is just what naturally happens when you get more depth. Even though the Oilers have been trading away draft picks and are in win-now mode, GM Stan Bowman has previous experience keeping the window to win for a Cup contender open longer, and as such he knows how to pluck guys from the waiver wire, the pool of college free agents, and free agents from Europe to fill in the gaps from the draft picks we trade away that would normally add to our prospect pool.

The Oilers are right on the cusp of realizing some of that depth coming to play in the big leagues next season, which would then allow the Oilers to both get younger and save cap space, items on the checklist that are both vital to keeping the Cup-contending window open longer.

Let’s look at both of those players now.

Atro Leppänen – Left-Side D

Leppänen comes to the Oilers as one of the aforementioned European free agents that Bowman signed this past offseason. He was a high-performing puck mover in the Finnish pro leagues, putting up 21-42-63 in 60 games with a sparkling plus-eight rating to go along with it.

As you can see from Leppänen’s scouting report, his puck-moving is top-notch, but it’s his defence that needs work despite his plus/minus last season in Finland. With a high-risk, high-reward player, even if his overall game was good, his defensive mistakes could still cost the team goals, which is part of the reason why he’s been sent to Bakersfield, even though the preseason is still only at about the midway point. It was always essentially a foregone conclusion that the player would go down to the Condors to start the season, in part to balance out his game better, and in part to adjust to the smaller ice surface as well as North American culture and the English language, not to mention the more physical aspects of the NHL. It’s always better to do that sort of thing in the AHL rather than the NHL. The pace of the game is slower, so it’s easier to adjust there.

But don’t fool yourself, despite the fact he’s here only on a one-year contract, he had a good training camp and preseason, and once he rounds out his game and is better prepared for the bigger scrutiny of the NHL, then watch out. Think a guy who, once he is a complete player, would be just as good defensively as the incumbent Brett Kulak, but able to produce more offence. If you can get a puck mover on every defensive pairing, with the firepower we have at forward on this team, we could trade Brett Kulak away for picks and/or prospects at the trade deadline or at the very least let him walk after the season and re-sign Leppänen at significant cap savings from the $2.75 million cap hit Kulak carries for us now.

If you want to project out what Leppänen would produce as an NHL player next season, let me introduce you to one of the few advanced stats I put stock into — NHLe (NHL equivalency, used to measure players who come to the NHL from other leagues). Based upon the amount of games played last year in the Finnish pro leagues and assuming he plays 82 games in the NHL (he won’t, but let’s just assume he does for an easy hypothetical), then he would produce 39 points in the NHL. If he plays half the season, that’s still 20 points, which is decent for a rookie blueliner. Leppänen has a two-way, $975k cap hit for this season.

Alec Regula – Right-Side D

Regula’s road to the Oilers is different than Leppänen’s. Regula was originally drafted in the third round by the Detroit Red Wings, then was traded to Chicago, and then was traded to Boston. Boston put him on waivers, which is when Bowman pounced on him as he remembered him from when they were both working in the Blackhawks organization. Regula was an AHL bubble player at the time, getting into 22 NHL games over three seasons in the Chicago organization. Regula took another step forward in his career last season while in the Bruins organization. Despite the fact that he never got called up to the Bruins, he tied his career-best boxcars of 4-22-26, but this time finished with a fantastic plus-36 to go with it, which was a career high by a country mile and a sign that his defensive game was catching up with his puck-moving.

This is exactly why Bowman picked Regula up on waivers. He sees a 25-year-old just entering his prime producing years who has a higher puck-moving ceiling than the current incumbent in Ty Emberson.

Due to the fact that Regula not only has less of a learning curve than Leppänen but also has slightly easier competition on the right side (more on that in a minute), on paper at least, Regula would get a call-up first when he’s ready and there’s a spot on the roster.

If Regula can translate his game to the pace of the NHL sooner rather than later, we might see Emberson as a soon-to-be trade chip. Regula’s NHLe would be 19 points. This is again assuming an 82-game season, which isn’t happening, but we can project that out to a total that would still be solid, albeit unspectacular, for a rookie NHLer.

Regula was injured all of last season, but Bowman sees so much potential in him that he re-upped him for $1.55 million over two seasons. Regula has a two-way, $775k cap hit for this season and next, at which point he’ll still be an RFA.