Unexpected Oilers twist puts 44-goal scorer in play
Patrik Laine played five games for the Montreal Canadiens this season and never scored a goal. Now he hits the open market July 1, and the Edmonton Oilers are among the teams watching closely.
It was a brutal year for the Finnish winger. He finished the regular season with one assist and a -3 rating over those five appearances, then watched from the press box as his teammates beat Tampa Bay, eliminated Buffalo, and pushed all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals without him.
That last part is going to stick. A team capable of making the ECF proved it could do it without one of its most dangerous pure scorer.
So where does that leave Laine? As a 28-year-old unrestricted free agent for the first time in his NHL career, heading into a July 1 market that doesn't have a lot of elite left-side scoring options.
That's where Edmonton enters the picture.
The Oilers finished 41-30-11, went out in the first round against Anaheim, and spent the summer asking the same question they've been asking for years: where do they find another trigger man to play alongside Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl?
Why Edmonton's power play desperately needs a Laine-type shooter
McDavid put up 138 points this season. Draisaitl added 97 in 65 games. The firepower at the top is not the problem. The problem is that defenses have spent years scheming around those two, and Edmonton still couldn't convert that talent into a deep playoff run.
Zach Hyman scored 31 goals in 58 games, but he's a net-front power forward, not a one-timer threat. That's a different tool.
A shooter like Laine, who produces almost entirely from the left circle and forces penalty killers to respect a different vector, bends defensive structures in a way that creates room for everyone else. It's the difference between a defense reading one play and having to account for two.
The cap math is the part that actually makes this interesting. GM Stan Bowman is already carrying Draisaitl at $14 million, McDavid at $12.5 million, and Evan Bouchard at $10.5 million. There is not a lot of room to take on a full-freight veteran contract.
Laine's injury-shortened season, however, changes what the market will offer him. Five games. One point. Teams are going to want a prove-it structure.
That's not an insult. It's an opportunity. A lower base with performance bonuses lets a cap-strapped team like Edmonton absorb the risk without gutting the roster around it.
The honest question no one in Edmonton wants to answer: what version of Laine shows up?
Because there are two. There's the Laine who scored 44 goals in 2017-18, the one who can fire a puck through a tire at 50 feet with the same nonchalance as most people folding laundry. And there's the Laine who has played a combined 32 games over the last two seasons.
The Oilers lost a first-round series to Anaheim. That's not a roster that can afford to gamble recklessly. But a short-term, incentive-laden deal on a shooter with that kind of ceiling? Bowman has taken longer odds on worse bets.
The market opens July 1. Edmonton won't be the only team calling.
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YESTERDAY
JUNE 2, 2026
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| G | A | PTS | ||
| Shea Theodore | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| Brayden McNabb | - | 3 | 3 | |
| Nikolaj Ehlers | 2 | - | 2 | |
| Brett Howden | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Jalen Chatfield | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Ivan Barbashev | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Shayne Gostisbehere | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Tomas Hertl | 1 | - | 1 | |
| William Karlsson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jordan Staal | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jack Eichel | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Mitch Marner | - | 1 | 1 | |
| K'Andre Miller | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Colton Sissons | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Jaccob Slavin | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Cole Smith | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Sebastian Aho | - | - | - | |
| Frederik Andersen | - | - | - | |
| Rasmus Andersson | - | - | - | |
| Jackson Blake | - | - | - | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||