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Edmonton Oilers announces a flurry of five roster moves on Wednesday morning:
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The moves were necessitated by the knee injury suffered by hard-luck forward Dylan Holloway in Wednesday’s 4-1 win vs. NY Islanders. That injury has essentially forced the Oilers to place the player on Long Term Injured Reserve, which will allow them to get cap relief for the player but which will end their ability to accrue cap space towards the deadline.
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The club made one final nod in that direction on Tuesday when they reassigned Raphael Lavoie to Bakersfield for a day, then recalled him this morning. This was anticipated by many yesterday as a paper transaction, including the ever-perceptive Hart Levine of PuckPedia:
That will be the last such move the Oilers can make while LTIR is in play, which it will presumably be for for quite some time while Holloway recovers from his latest bodily insult. Kris Knoblauch stated “week to week” with a lower body injury, with the minimum absence now set at 10 games and 24 days.
With LTIR now in place, the squad has also seen fit to place utility forward Mattias Janmark in the same mode, retroactive to the date of his injury, Oct 26 vs. NY Rangers. Given its dual minima of 10 games and 24 days, the veteran will be eligible to return no sooner than Nov 22 at Carolina.
Leaving enough active cap space to recall two other healthy bodies, both of whom started the season with the big club before getting sent down. Defenceman Philip Broberg and left wing Adam Erne both will make the short trip from Calgary (where the Condors played last night) to fill out the Oilers roster with 22 players. Twenty-two!
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Dangerously assuming all 22 are healthy and ready to play, that would give new coach Kris Knoblauch a modicum of roster flexibility. He can potentially healthy-scratch both a forward and a defenceman, or use the 11F/7D option that his predecessor Jay Woodcroft used to advantage during his 1¾ year tenure.
One last player on the active roster remains a health concern, that being right wing Connor Brown who has missed the last 5 games since pulling up lame in the Dallas game on Nov 02. Brown was a full participant in practice on the fourth line on Tuesday so is clearly close. As I understand things, the Oilers are now fully cap compliant so would not need to run a man short before filling the hole left by the Holloway injury.
Expect no sympathy from NHL opponents, especially tonight’s visitors
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