The Edmonton Oilers have finally come to the end of the road with Jack Campbell. Their attempt to trade the pricey goaltender having proved unsuccessful, the NHL club has placed him on waivers for purpose of buying out the last three years of the five-year, $25 million contract he signed just two summers ago.
It’s a tough pill to swallow, leaving a hole in the squad’s salary cap for the next six years, but deemed a necessary one given the “savings” that will be realized over the first three of those years between the cost of the buyout vs. the full cap hit.
The figures vary from year to year because they are based on the variable salaries committed each season, not the average annual value which generally applies to long-term pacts for cap purposes.
The best news happens right up front, in that the buyout will “create” $3.9 million in additional cap space for the upcoming season. This is followed by two seasons at roughly 50% savings, then another three of nothing but cost, namely $1.5 million each season.
Campbell was 30 years old when the Oilers signed him to much fanfare on the first day of free agency just two summers ago. He was brought in to replace Mike Smith, a three-year starter for the Oilers at a very reasonable price point, just at the time that Stu Skinner was set to become a full-time NHLer after years of development. Campbell #1, Skinner #2 was the plan, with not much room for advancement for the younger man given the five-year term of the new guy.
Except, of course, that’s not how it worked out. Campbell struggled out of the gate in Edmonton, played his way out of the starting job by November, and wound up starting just 34 of the Oilers’ 82 games that season, then none at all of their 12 playoff games.
Things went from bad to much, much worse in 2023-24. The club struggled mightily right from the start, winning just 2 of their first 12 games and allowing goals against in bunches. It took two major changes to turn things around: the firing of coaches Jay Woodcroft and Dave Manson, and the waiver/demotion of Jack Campbell.
The turnaround thereafter was immediate and enduring. The Oilers won 47 of their last 70 games, then 15 of 25 in the playoffs. Calvin Pickard did a solid job in the backup role, while Skinner — who endured a rough start of his own — turned his season completely around.
So did Campbell… in the AHL. Even that took a while; the organization did him no favours by insisting he play his way out of it rather than spend a little time out of the spotlight entirely to work on the fundamentals of his game, as his old club Toronto successfully did in a similar situation with Ilya Samsonov. Only after three straight poor starts by Campbell (.819 save percentage) did the Condors go to a two-man rotation that included promising Olivier Rodrigue, stablizing the situation. Campbell played well after that in a shared role.
But it was a shared role in the minor leagues, and there he remained. There was no way back to the NHL without the Oilers waiving Pickard and another player to make room for the $1.15 million of Campbell’s contract that had been buried in the AHL.
Campbell never played another game for the OIlers.
In all, the squad got precious little return on its $25 million investment. Campbell started just 39 games for the Oilers, with just a third of those considered quality starts.
This is just the NHL part of his career, consisting now of 176 regular season games. He’s played a further 235 in the AHL, most of them on the long road up the ladder from 11th overall draft pick by Dallas in 2010 to finally earning a backup role in Los Angeles eight years later. It took a further three seasons before he finally established himself as a #1 man in Toronto late in the COVID-ravaged short season of 2021. The 49 games he played for Toronto in 2021-22 was by far a career high, previously 31, and he struggled mightily in the back half of that campaign. At times he was his own worst enemy, with self-criticism bordering on vicious at times.
But with Smith declared unfit to play and a thin goaltending market that summer of ’22, Campbell was deemed the best available solution for the Oilers, who didn’t pursue other options such as a trade for a proven vet with a year or two to run. Instead, it was a five-year investment at major dollars on a man who’d been an NHL starter for just one season to that point.
In fairness, nobody could have foreseen the collapse in his play. His career save percentage was .916 through 134 games with three organizations, then plummeted by 30 points as an Oiler.
The good news is that Skinner seized the day and established himself as Edmonton’s top netminder in short order. The bad news? The massive contract invested in the would-be #1 will linger as a seven-figure drain on Edmonton’s salary cap for the next half dozen years.
Jack Campbell is a good man who wound up in an untenable situation. He may yet have an NHL future, likely as a backup at an appropriate price point. Alas, that is not what happened in Edmonton.
Oilers issue qualifying offers to five RFAs but not Savoie, Fanti
The Oilers had seven restricted free agents on expiring contracts and issued qualifying offers to five of them in advanmce of this afternoon’s deadline. Foremost among them, Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway, first-round draft picks in 2019 and ’20 whose entry-level contracts both expire today. Both players spent much of their final season in Bakersfield but established themselves as full-time Oilers very late in the season. Fair to say both have bright futures.
Of the others, James Hamblin played 31 games for the Oilers in 2023-24 and Raphael Lavoie 7, while Noel Hoefenmayer was a full-time AHLer after signing with the organization as a Group VI UFA last summer. All are best classified as “tweeners” at this moment, with Lavoie perhaps best-positioned to seize a full-time NHL role next season. The 6’4, 215-pound winger with the quick release has scored 71 goals in 192 AHL games, including 25 and 28 over the past two seasons.
The surprise here is the missing name of Carter Savoie. He too is a winger with offensive gifts, unfortunately they did not manifest during his two seasons in the AHL. Drafted at #100 overall in 2020, Savoie starred for University of Denver for two years before signing a pro deal. In Bakersfield he struggled with injuries, got caught in a numbers game and produced just 18-15-33 in 109 AHL games.
It’s a little surprising to see the Oilers cut ties with a talented player just 22 years of age. Perhaps there’s more to the story that didn’t make headlines here in Edmonton, some 3000 km away.
The other player who wasn’t qualified is goaltender Ryan Fanti, signed as a college free agent in the spring of 2022. He played 51 of his 60 pro games with Edmonton’s ECHL affiliate, the Fort Wayne Komets, where he struggled with injury in the season just past.
The departure of Campbell and Fanti leaves the Oilers with four pro goalies, including Skinner and three other fellows who were re/signed in the last few months:
- Calvin Pickard, signed to a two-year extension this past Friday
- Olivier Rodrigue , signed to a one-year extension on Mar 30
- Connor Ungar, a (Canadian) college free agent signed on Mar 18
Expect at least one more depth stopper to be added in the days/weeks to come.
The special case of Noah Philp
Clarifying the status of prospect Noah Philp, with thanks to reader G Dub who raised the valid question in the comments section of this post.
A big, late-blooming centre signed to a one-year ELC from the famous University of Alberta Golden Bears program, Philp enjoyed an excellent season as a rookie pro in Bakersfield in 2022-23 before announcing his retirement, understood to be related to life events completely outside the game.
Anticipating a possible return down the road, the Oilers tookl the precaution of issuing a qualifying offer last June, as described in a post equivalent to this one published twelve months ago today and further confirmed when his return to the game was announced this past March.
- Though Philp’s one-year (due to his age at signing) Entry Level Contract had expired, Edmonton GM Ken Holland also took the precaution of issuing a qualifying offer last spring, knowing full well that it would be refused. That step preserved Edmonton’s RFA rights to the player, who has been sequestered on their Reserve List this season.
