Report: With Russell signing coming, Oilers will trade a star player

When news broke of Edmonton Oilers defenseman Andrej Sekera’s devastating ACL injury and his 6-9 months of recovery time, media analysts of the team speculated that the likelihood of signing free-agent defender Krus Russell increased ten-fold. Less than a week later, it appears that speculation will come to fruition. 

Reports out of Edmonton from David Staples and Mark Spector indicate that the Oilers are indeed on the verge of signing Kris Russell to a multi-year deal somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.5 million - $4 million annually. The catch? It likely means that Jordan Eberle’s days in Edmonton are through. With raises for both Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl on the horizon, Eberle simply isn’t doing enough to warrant such a large chunk of the Oilers’ salary cap and will likely be squeezed out, says Staples in his latest article for the Edmonton Journal.

Ironically, Eberle carries the same cap hit as forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Milan Lucic and there’s been little discussion of their possible movement. In both cases, however, those players provide multi-dimensions for the Oilers offense, whereas Eberle is more or less a one dimensional players. Will Jordan Eberle be the next of the Oilers’ “young core” to be thrown on the scrap heap? If so, maybe he’ll one day trade stories with Taylor Hall, Nail Yakupov and Sam Gagner.