How much salary cap space Edmonton Oilers have after today's trade
The Edmonton Oilers are once again a dollar-in, dollar-out team at the NHL trade deadline, and the latest trade to bring in Trent Frederic hasn’t changed things.
The team’s cap space is dictating how GM Stan Bowman approaches the deadline. Despite Frederic being hurt and potentially heading to LTIR for the rest of the season, the Oilers made sure to get plenty of retention on his contract.
Before the trade, Frederic held a cap hit of $2.3 million which moved down to $1.15 million when the Boston Bruins retained 50 per cent of his cap hit in a trade to the New Jersey Devils. The Devils then further retained an additional 50 per cent in a trade to the Oilers meaning Frederic currently holds a cap hit of just $575,000 with Edmonton.
Max Jones, who was also part of that deal, would carry a cap hit of $1 million in the NHL, but that wouldn’t factor in if he remains in the AHL. Overall, the Oilers did add some salary, but where does that put them in terms of deadline space?
According to Puckpedia, the Oilers currently have about $4.6 million in deadline cap space due to being in LTIR with Evander Kane. On the surface, that sounds like a decent number and one that Bowman can certainly work with to make another trade, but there are some layers to that number.
After acquiring Frederic @ $575K & Jones ($1M in AHL), #LetsGoOilers have $4.6M Cap Space remaining in LTIR with 23 active players
LTIR: Kane
If they add Frederic to LTIR, they would gain $575K Cap Space while he's outhttps://t.co/2JMAXic8vE
— PuckPedia (@PuckPedia) March 4, 2025
The first layer is that the Oilers could have more cap space to work with if Frederic winds up not being healthy enough to play in the regular season. This would mean that the team would have to put him on LTIR, alongside Kane, which would open up an additional $575,000 in cap space to go on top of the existing $4.6 million, which would put them right around the $5 million mark.
While that may sound nice, it wouldn’t exactly make much sense for the Oilers to not only acquire Frederic if he’s going to miss that much time, but also add assets in order to get that double-retention. For those reasons, this feels like a less likely option at this time.
Another layer has to deal with Kane and whether or not he will be on LTIR for the rest of the season or if he will be healthy enough to return to action before the playoffs. Right now, the entirety of Edmonton’s cap space is predicated on the fact that Kane’s $5.125 cap hit is in LTIR right now. If Kane is healthy before the playoffs, the Oilers won’t have that cap space to work with.
This uncertainty will have a big impact on the team’s ability to bring in more salary before the deadline due to Bowman needing to make sure he has enough cap-room to handle Kane’s cap hit going back onto the books.
The easy answer to how much cap space the Oilers have at this second is $4.6 million, but they may as well have next to nothing if Kane comes back. Trading Kane before the deadline eliminates that possibility, but there is not much time for that to happen.
We’ll have to wait and see what transpires in the next few days.