Kasperi Kapanen enters the new season with the Edmonton Oilers in a spot that matters. After a strong finish to the 2025-26 campaign, he’s back with a fresh one-year extension, a larger opportunity in front of him, and a chance to help steady a lineup that has changed around him.
The Oilers have lost some familiar veterans, with Adam Henrique leaving in free agency and Jack Roslovic heading to the Toronto Maple Leafs. That opens up more than just ice time.
It takes experience out of the bottom six, and it puts more responsibility on players like Kapanen and Jason Dickinson to help guide that part of the roster. If Kapanen slides lower in the lineup, he’ll likely be skating with younger players who need some support and consistency beside them.
That’s part of why Edmonton committed to him on July 1 with a one-year extension worth $2.6 million, his highest cap hit since 2023-24. The organization has made its bet, and Kapanen now has to back it up.
There’s plenty in his recent run to suggest he can. In the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs, he posted four goals and six points in six games, including one game-winning goal.
He also finished with 17 hits, a plus-7 rating, and averaged just under 18 minutes per night. In a postseason that ended early for the Oilers and featured struggles from several players, he was asked to take on more.
That stretch gave the team a reason to believe there’s more there.
He’s already shown what that can look like when things are clicking. After coming back from injury in January and missing a couple months, Kapanen caught fire with three goals and seven points in seven games. That run served as a reminder of the kind of impact he can make when he finds his rhythm.
The tools are obvious. Kapanen has speed, a shot that can do damage, and the edge to finish checks, something that stood out in the playoffs.
Even in 41 games last season, he still ranked sixth on the team in hits. With a healthier year and a better fit alongside him, Edmonton has reason to expect more of that physical presence.
He’s been around long enough, since the 2015-16 season, to bring a steadier hand than some of the younger players and grinders filling out the lower half of the roster. He has bounced around the lineup before, and that figure-it-out-as-you-go role may be coming again with a couple new forwards in the mix. However it shakes out, the Oilers will need him to absorb some of the slack left by the departures and turn last season’s flashes into something more consistent in 2026-27.
In Other News...
Oilers Depth Gamble Suddenly Has A Real Opening To Make Noise
Eduards Tralmaks has spent a winding pro career proving he can score wherever he lands, whether that was in the Czech leagues, the NCAA or the AHL, and now the 29-year-old undrafted forward is getting a fresh look with the Oilers after signing as a free agent on July 1, 2026. He also brought that touch to Team Latvia at the Olympics, which helps explain why Edmonton was willing to add him as another depth option for a group that is always searching for usable offense beyond the stars.
The opening may be bigger than it first looked a few weeks ago, because injuries have thinned the competition among the bottom-six forwards and created a real lane for Tralmaks to press his case for NHL minutes. The one thing that has long trailed his scoring profile is skating, so the question now is whether he can do enough in camp and early-season looks to make the Oilers keep him around when the roster starts to settle. [Read more 🡒]
Connor McDavid Faces One Oilers Question That Could Shape Everything
Edmontons offseason conversation has drifted beyond the usual questions of depth and special teams and landed on a far bigger one: how Mike Babcock will handle Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl at five-on-five. The pairing has obvious offensive upside, but it also sits at the center of the Oilers defensive concerns, especially with a new coach inheriting a roster that has already spent plenty of time trying to balance scoring with structure.
For McDavid, the discussion is not just about who skates beside him, but what version of his game the Oilers will get if the alignment changes. His 2016-17 numbers are part of the argument, as are the defensive and offensive trends that have followed him into the 2025-26 season, and a recent fan survey leaned toward splitting him and Draisaitl at even strength. The result is a familiar Oilers tension heading into the new season: whether a different lineup arrangement can unlock more balance, or whether the team is simply asking its best players to solve a problem that keeps coming back. [Read more 🡒]
Oilers Prospect Situation Suddenly Feels Bigger Than Routine Draft Chatter
The Oilers track record with draft picks from Russia has been a mixed one over the last decade, with Edmonton cycling through several selections between 2010 and 2019 and getting only limited NHL returns from that group. That history gives extra weight to every new prospect update, especially when it comes to players whose paths to North America already carry more uncertainty than most. Maxim Berezkin remains part of that broader conversation, but the more immediate intrigue now sits with another young player whose development has started to matter in a bigger way.
Paul Fischer has drawn attention because his play has been encouraging, yet his contract situation still hangs there without a resolution. The Oilers brought him in through the August 2024 offer-sheets trade, but he still has not signed, and that leaves his long-term fit with the organization feeling less routine than draft churn usually does. For a team that has already learned how hard it can be to get talented players to stay and succeed in North America, the next step with Fischer carries a little more urgency than it might have a few months ago. [Read more 🡒]