Josh Archibald has signed a new contract with the Edmonton Oilers.

30-goal scorer Josh Archibald on McDavid's wing, here we goooooo

(/s, just to avoid Poe's Law and a bunch of needless whinging about "OMG!!!!1 u really think that" and "I was just being sarcastic")

Great signing for cheap.

Edmonton is finding what they can with the slim pickings off the UFA winger buffet but all the tasty stuff is long gone. He will eat some minutes and PK but he won’t solve their goal scoring minutes. 4th line player if there ever was one.

In contrast, someone like Oscar Lindberg (whose Corsi is 5% higher than Archibald over their careers) would help drive the play more. Even a veteran like Pominville or Vanek could be of more use for 1 final season.

Maybe the best fit would be the best winger not named “Williams” on the market, and that would be Patrick Maroon. He fared well in his last visit and you would think he would jump at the chance to return. Perhaps, now that it’s almost 3 aka into FA, Holland will circle back to Maroon. His term and/or ask is obviously too high, but if a compromise can be reached (say 2y at $2.5M) I would jump on that if I were the Oilers.

Oilers go bargain shopping for a depth winger. Could be this year's Chiasson (or Reider), time will tell.

More ice time = more production?????

Maybe a sliver of hope??

Penguins should have brought him back for this price

Oilers need more speed in their lineup. All of those players mentioned aren't brining enough speed. They already have Lucic, Khaira, Kassian, Brodziak, and Chiasson for the "big guy that's not very fast" type of player. Don't need more even if Maroon and Lingberg would be improvements to some of the guys mentioned.

I understand the need for speed, but at this point any good finisher should be considered imo. They need guys to put it in the back of the net, period. I'm sure McDavid and Drai can adjust accordingly.

Also, decent signing here. It's a bit of a career resurrection for Josh, so let's see what he can do. What I'm glad about is that Edmonton management aren't rushing into fixing the lineup. It'll take some time and they seem up for it.

At $1M? Not a great signing IMO.

McDavid's new winger

CMcD will be over the moon with this signing. I bet he wishes Chiarelli was still there so he could get traded away for a bag of pucks.

Do you really mean that bro? Your statement was so wack I had to stop reading after the first sentence.

Edmonton ... in the most literal sense ... has exactly:

Three top-2 centers and fifteen bottom-6 wingers with nothing in between.
One top-4 defense and nine bottom-pair defense with nothing in between.
Zero starting goalies and two backup goalies with nothing in between.

bruh, it was soooooo wack.

This photo is shockingly accurate ....

thanks for the future avatar pic (once the mods get whatever problems were going on with it fixed, that is)

Fair enough point with the forwards, though I'd point out that at least a few of those bottom 6 guys are more better described as top 9, meaning they optimally are third line guys but can play up in the lineup if need be. They have a few young forwards who could make the move into that description or better too, but realistically they are probably a year or two away from doing that.

Your rating of their backend is simply wrong. They have three top 4 dmen in nurse, klefbom, and larsson. Russel and Benning both are capable bottom pair guys, though I wouldn't mind seeing Benning bumped down into a number 7 role if a couple of the younger dmen can step up. They have about 5 young dmen that will all be competing for two spots in that roster, so there's a good chance they end up with two solid options.

Goaltending is tough to judge. It really depends on how well the team in front of them performs. Koskinen showed he has what it takes to be a good goalie in this league, wether that be +/- 40 games will depend on how well Smith performs. This is basically a tandem setup that isn't much different from what they had last season. So again, it will depend largely on their team play in front of these guys.

As far as the team goes: the kind of players they've been brining in, along with additions from their farm system, fit nicely with their new head coaches style of coaching. He had success in Arizona with lineups that depended on the hard work of role players and everybody doing their part.

But ya, they are still missing 1-2 good forwards and 1 top 4-2 dman from being a contender. Likely won't find the forwards within this season, but may find another top 4 dman out of that bunch of young players they have. The good thing for them though is that they're division is all over the place right now and, with maybe the exception of Calgary, it's anybodies guess who'll be in the top 3 this season.