Latest Edmonton Oilers contract revelations will have big impact on trade deadline plans
Edmonton Oilers fans got some unexpected news this morning that may have a profound impact on the team’s trade deadline plans.
With the deadline just four days away, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman dropped an interesting piece of news on the latest episode of the 32 Thoughts podcast. While discussing Edmonton’s approach to the deadline, Friedman revealed that forward Viktor Arvidsson has a no-move clause attached to his contract.
After posting the pod, Friedman followed it up on social media, saying the same applies to Oilers forward Adam Henrique. Despite those contracts being signed in the summer, it wasn’t publicly known that they both had an NMC attached until now.
Henrique has one tooā¦not sure if both years, but definitely now. Just like Buchnevich in STL getting the full NTC added to the last year of this deal, there are always details that sneak by.
— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) March 3, 2025
The Oilers, of course, would have been well aware of this situation when the contracts were initially signed. However, now that everyone knows, it will drastically affect how we look at Edmonton’s deadline plans.
Both Arvidsson and Henrique are struggling in their first full seasons with the team. They have not lived up to the roles they were initially brought in to play and it’s starting to become an issue. If the Oilers were to trade any roster player at the deadline to open up space, it would most likely be one of those two players, but the trade protection will make that very difficult now.
It’s unlikely that either would be able to be shipped off to a rebuilding team due to these clauses, and it’d be difficult to dump them on a contending team, considering their poor years. Effectively, these clauses have handcuffed the Oilers into keeping their two easiest cap dumps.
This puts all the pressure on either trading Evander Kane before the deadline to open up space and hoping that he’s out until the playoffs so that they can utilize his LTIR savings. Either way, it’s not a sure shot that the Oilers can open up any meaningful amount of cap space now.
Even looking back at the contracts, the decision to include them in the first place is a curious move by then-acting GM Jeff Jackson. Henrique’s production slowed when he was traded to the Oilers, and he was 34, which should have been a sign that his play was starting to regress with age. On Arvidsson’s side, he has had injuries ravage him over the past couple of seasons, having played in just 18 regular-season games last year.
When you look at those contracts and the ones they balked at giving guys like Dylan Holloway and Ryan McLeod, who probably wouldn’t have needed any trade protection, it starts to become confusing as to why they decided to go the direction they did.
Bowman will now have to navigate the deadline on a dollar-in, dollar-out basis, which is a term that is quickly growing tired on Oilers fans.