The Edmonton Oilers clear some cap space with Cody Ceci trade

In the middle of last week, the St. Louis Blues submitted two offer sheets to the Edmonton Oilers. The Blues are attempting to poach both forward Dylan Holloway and defenseman Philip Broberg from the Oilers. 

The Edmonton Oilers made a few moves over the last day that will help them deal with this. It started with a trade that they made with one of their biggest rivals in the Vancouver Canucks. 

Edmonton sent a 2025 fourth-round pick to Vancouver (originally acquired from the Ottawa Senators) in exchange for forward Vasily Podkolzin. He is a good defensive player that has to work on his finishing abilities. If there is a team that could unlock that for him, it’s the Oilers. 

A few hours later, the Oilers made another trade with a division rival. They acquired defenseman Ty Emberson from the San Jose Sharks in exchange for defenseman Cody Ceci and a 2025 third-round draft pick.

The Edmonton Oilers have made some smart moves over this last week

This could mean a few things. It likely is dumping Ceci’s $3.25 million salary cap hit so they can match at least one of these offer sheets. Emberson will be his replacement in the lineup (and you can make a strong argument that it’s an upgrade). 

Podkolzin will likely replace Holloway in the lineup if they end up letting him go to the Blues via the offer sheet. They have cleared some cap space and found a way to bring in someone to replace anyone that they are losing. 

The offer sheets will be officially resolved on Tuesday as it is seven days out from when they were originally received. It has been a while since we’ve had decisions like this made before.

The Oilers seem to have done a lot of prepping over the last week to make the call. It will be interesting to see what the final answer is and the language used to present it.