Oilers sign veteran defenseman to three-year extension

Ekholm, 35, has long been a quality top-four piece and one of the league’s better two-way defenders. The 6’5″ lefty was drafted in the fourth round in 2009 by the Predators, with whom he’s spent the vast majority of his career. 

He first cracked the NHL lineup two years later and was a full-timer by 2013. He was a top-four staple by the time Nashville’s championship contention window opened, culminating in a Stanley Cup Final appearance in 2017, and peaked with a 10th-place finish in Norris Trophy voting in the 2018-19 season.

While Ekholm signed a four-year, $25M extension with Nashville in 2021, he wouldn’t play very much for the Preds under that deal. With the club falling out of the playoff race in 2022-23 and the Oilers in desperate need of a needle-mover on defense, Edmonton surrendered a haul that included Tyson Barrie, recent first-round pick Reid Schaefer, plus their 2023 first-round pick to acquire Ekholm with three full seasons still left on his deal at a $6.25M cap hit, which Nashville brought down to $6M for the Oilers with a small amount of retention.

Since the deal, Ekholm has more than held up his end of the bargain. He’s been a staple on Edmonton’s top pair alongside offensive dynamo Evan Bouchard, highlighted by a dominant 2023-24 campaign that saw him record a career-high 11-34–45 scoring line in 79 games along with a dominant +44 rating. He finished 12th in Norris voting that year, controlling a remarkable 62.8% of expected goals on his pairing with Bouchard, according to MoneyPuck.

Last year was more of the same. He had 33 points in 65 games with a +11 rating, averaging north of 22 minutes per game, until a torn adductor ended his regular season in March. He missed the vast majority of Edmonton’s second straight run to the Cup Final as a result, although he did return for the clinching Game 5 of the Western Conference Final and played through the entirety of the Cup Final. He wasn’t fully healthy and had his minutes capped at a slightly more conservative 21:35 per game as a result, but he still managed an even rating and remained involved offensively with a goal and five assists.

He remained stapled to Bouchard, and while they weren’t quite as dominant at controlling play as they were in 2023-24, they still controlled a sparkling 59.5% of expected goals together, finishing second in the league among pairings who logged at least 500 minutes. With his point production yet to see a sharp decline and his under-the-hood numbers remaining some of the best in the league in a system that serves him well, it’s easy to see why the Oilers don’t have a ton of concern about signing him through his age-38 season – particularly at a price as attractive as $4M per season for a top-pair blue liner, far below his present market value.

It recently looked like Edmonton would enter the season with four big-name pending UFAs: Ekholm, Stuart Skinner, Jake Walman and Connor McDavid. Three of those names have signed in the last three days. Walman’s seven-year, $49M extension means Edmonton’s top four blue-liners are now all signed through 2029, when Bouchard and Ekholm will be UFAs. There’s McDavid’s “win-now-or-lose-me” two-year, $25M extension as well that keeps all of Edmonton’s true core in place through at least 2028, giving it three more legitimate chances at a championship before the window might begin to close.

With Ekholm and McDavid taking significant discounts, things are looking quite comfortable for Edmonton next summer. The club projects to have at least $18.71M in cap space to fill eight roster spots, a number that could rise by a few million if the cap increases past its projected $104M limit. While the big names are taken care of, there’s still serviceable depth like Adam Henrique, Kasperi Kapanen and Brett Kulak on expiring deals, plus their top two goalies in Skinner and Calvin Pickard.