Oilers considering bringing back Tyson Barrie on PTO: report
A familiar face might be coming back to the Edmonton Oilers on a professional try-out.
Following a busy week that saw the Oilers lose both Cody Ceci and Philip Broberg from the right side of their defensive group, there is some thought that the team may need a more veteran presence to help out that position.
Ty Emberson, 24, is currently the frontrunner to win a spot on the Oilers’ second pair, and he has just 30 games of NHL experience. Troy Stecher and Josh Brown are both veterans behind him on the depth chart, but they don’t seem like ideal players to be NHL regulars.
With that in mind, reports surfaced from Edmonton Sports Talk’s Dustin Nielson last night that the Oilers are considering bringing back defenceman Tyson Barrie on a PTO before training camp.
Oilers are keeping all their options open on PTOs but they’ve already had conversations with Tyson Barrie.
They love him in the room, is he a fit on the ice with the way the blueline is currently built?
— Dustin Nielson (@nielsonTSN1260) August 22, 2024
Barrie spent about three seasons with the Oilers between 2020 and 2023, during which he tallied 25 goals and 132 points in just 190 games. He helped quarterback one of the NHL’s greatest powerplay units and lived up to his billing as an above-average offensive defenceman.
The problem in his game was his defensive ability, which struggled while on a pair with Darnell Nurse. With Evan Bouchard emerging as the team’s de-facto PP quarterback and offensive driver, the Oilers traded Barrie to the Nashville Predators in exchange for Mattias Ekholm at the 2023 NHL Trade Deadline.
Barrie’s game quickly fell off with the Predators, and he became an occasional healthy scratch last season. He played in just one of Nashville’s six playoff games against the Vancouver Canucks last year.
Adding Barrie doesn’t seem like it would fill a lot of holes for what the Oilers currently need. At the moment, Edmonton’s most glaring hole is at 2RD and with the knowledge that Barrie and Nurse don’t work particularly well together, it’s hard to believe that would be the spot to put him.
In addition, much of Barrie’s value came from the man advantage and playing heavy minutes with Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl. He is unlikely to have either of those things now with Bouchard’s emergence as one of the league’s premier offensive defensemen.
Could Barrie potentially form a third pair with Brett Kulak? Sure, but it seems like this would not be a position where he would exceed, as his defensive metrics are not great, and it would stifle his now-waning offensive abilities. In the end, Barrie would be cheaper than if Ceci was in that spot, but the effectiveness would be about the same, if not worse.
Given Edmonton’s salary cap situation, it would be strange to dump more money into a player like Barrie when you could just try one of Stecher or Brown in that spot and get arguably similar results.
Barrie is a popular player in the room, but when it comes to managing the salary cap and maximizing the team’s potential, adding him to this group doesn’t make a whole ton of sense at the moment.