5 available forwards who could still land with the Edmonton Oilers before the season starts
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The Edmonton Oilers have $4.7 million in cap space and a full 23-man roster, which is exactly why a professional tryout is the wrong tool here.
Tryouts exist for teams with money problems.
Edmonton has a room problem instead, and those two things get solved very differently.
There are still five players available who the oilers could target over the next few weeks.
Look at what happened last October. Jack Roslovic sat out the entire summer as the top unsigned skater on the market, and he declined to take a tryout at anyone's training camp.
He waited until Edmonton's season opener against the Calgary Flames, then signed a one-year deal worth $1.5 million.
Stan Bowman still had to make a corresponding roster move to register it, because the Oilers were already carrying 23 players.
Roslovic then scored 21 goals. The lesson Bowman took from that was not to start handing out camp invitations.
The leverage runs the other way
Vladimir Tarasenko is 34 and produced 23 goals and 47 points in 75 games with the Minnesota Wild last season.
Patrik Laine played five games for the Montreal Canadiens and has been medically cleared since June.
Neither man needs to audition.
New York Islanders insider Stefen Rosner reported his club's interest in Laine was tryout-only, and Laine has not taken it.
A player with real NHL production reads a tryout as an admission that no contract is coming.
Tarasenko has been linked to contenders all summer and can simply wait, exactly as Roslovic did.
What Edmonton actually has to decide
Mike Babcock's first camp is already crowded with players fighting for jobs behind Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.
Adding a veteran on a tryout does not create a spot, it just makes the roster math louder.
The realistic path is the boring one.
Bowman keeps his $4.7 million dry, lets September pass, and attempts to sign one of these players once the price collapses again as the weeks go by.
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