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Top 100 Oilers: No. 72 — Andrew Cogliano

Originally posted on Oilersnation | By Tyler Yaremchuk | Last updated Oct 4, 2025 9:16 AM ET

Oilersnation is reviving the Top 100 Edmonton Oilers of All Time list, a project originally created by the late Robin Brownlee in 2015. Andrew Cogliano comes in at No. 72 on our updated 2025 list. He was ranked No. 81 on Brownlee’s original list.

One common mistake that the Edmonton Oilers made during their decade of darkness was trading away young players for pennies on the dollar.

They would bring players up to the NHL too early, play them in roles that they weren’t quite ready for, and then, when they ultimately struggled, they would ship them away in a trade that would go on to look terrible in a pretty short period of time.

Andrew Cogliano is one of those blunders.

Drafted 25th overall in a loaded 2005 draft class, Cogliano would go on to play in 1294 NHL games. Only Anze Kopitar, Sidney Crosby, and Marc Eduard-Vlasic have played more from that class.

Sadly, only 328 of those games would come in an Oilers jersey.

After back-to-back 18-goal seasons to start his NHL career, Cogliano would see his goal totals drop to 10 and 11 before the Oilers decided to pull the pin and trade him to the Anaheim Ducks in the summer of 2011 for a second-round pick.

That pick would turn into Marco Roy, who never played an NHL game. Meanwhile, Cogliano went on to have a very strong NHL career.

Via The Nation Network

Notable

What’s potentially more notable than the deal that ultimately ended Cogliano’s time in Edmonton is the trade that he was almost a part of.

Back in the summer of 2009, the city was sent into a frenzy as reports circulated that the Oilers were on the verge of acquiring star winger Dany Heatley from the Ottawa Senators. Then-Oilers GM Steve Tambellini was offering the Ottawa Senators a package of players that included Cogliano, Ladislav Smid, and Dustin Penner for Heatley.

Despite much begging by the Oilers, Heatley exercised his no-trade clause, and the deal thankfully never got done. I still want to know what was on the DVD that the organization apparently sent to Heatley as a part of their pitch.

The trade that eventually sent Cogliano out of town was pretty underwhelming, but the deal that fell apart is one of the biggest ‘what ifs’ in the franchise’s history.

Aside from that, Cogliano’s biggest on-ice moment with the Oilers came during his rookie season in 2007-08. The speedy forward set an NHL record with game-winning overtime goals in three consecutive contests.

The Story

If there was one word that could be used to describe Cogliano’s NHL career, it would be availability.

Cogliano never missed a single game during his four years with the Edmonton Oilers, and that trend continued when he went to the Anaheim Ducks.

Cogliano would set the NHL’s active consecutive games played streak while with the Ducks, and it was looking like he was a lock to set the league’s record of 964 games, which at the time was held by Doug Jarvis.

His streak came to an end on January 13, 2018, when Cogliano was suspended by the NHL Department of Player Safety for a hit to the head of Los Angeles Kings forward Adrian Kempe. The suspension halted his Iron Man streak at 830 games, which was the longest active streak at the time.

To add salt to the wound, the league’s head of player safety at the time was George Parros, a former teammate of Cogliano’s during his time with the Ducks.

Cogliano would go on to play in San Jose and Dallas before landing in Colorado for the final stop of his career. He captured his one and only Stanley Cup in 2022 while with the Avalanche, eliminating the Oilers in the Western Conference Final.

Cogliano’s career is a story of dedication and reinvention. It wasn’t a typical career for a first-round pick, but it’s a damn impressive one. When it came time to adapt and realize he wasn’t going to be a flashy, top-line forward, he learned how to be sharp on the penalty kill and thrive in a bottom-six role.

Via The Nation Network

What Brownlee said

Despite scoring 18 goals in each of his first two seasons in Edmonton, the Oilers never figured out what to do with Cogliano. He was a speedster who was slotted in at centre but was better suited to the wing, as the Ducks have proven without any doubt since they stiffed Tambellini with a second-round pick that turned into centre Marc-Olivier Roy.

Cogliano was far from a perfect player. He wasn’t good enough on the face-off dot to be an effective centre. He wasn’t as committed to being a two-way player as he should have been. I remember how he bristled at the suggestion by Jim Matheson and me during an interview that he could be another Todd Marchant. He thought himself to be a more offensive player. Cogliano was a small player in a forward group that needed more size.

Things began to unravel in Edmonton for Cogliano, who set an NHL record in March of 2008 by scoring overtime goals in three consecutive games, in the summer of 2009. It was revealed then that Tambellini was offering the Ottawa Senators a package of players — Cogliano, Ladislav Smid and Dustin Penner — for Dany Heatley. Despite much begging by the Oilers, Heatley exercised his no-trade clause and the deal never did get done — bullet dodged.

Tough to say for sure how much, if any, effect that undone deal had on Cogliano, but his goal production dropped off to 10 and 11 the next two seasons. With Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle and Magnus Paajarvi dubbed the key players when the Oilers finally made their rebuild “official,” Tambellini deemed Cogliano expendable and shipped him to Anaheim.