For nearly half a decade, Edmonton’s third pair had a familiar look and a steady feel with Brett Kulak holding it down. He brought speed, defensive reliability and the kind of durability coaches love. That setup disappeared when Kulak’s game fell apart last season and GM Stan Bowman moved him out, and the Oilers have been searching for the right answer ever since.
That search has not gone smoothly through two games.
Jake Walman and Shakir Mukhamadullin have taken the brunt of it so far, and Thursday night’s win over the lowly Vancouver Canucks was ugly for both. Walman finished minus-3 and Mukhamadullin minus-4, and together they posted a 17 per cent expected goal share. They were overwhelmed.
Walman even got briefly benched on Thursday, a reminder that the Oilers are still trying to get their $7 million defender back on track. He says he wants to rediscover the game that made him so effective when he first arrived in Oil Country, and that matters because he was terrific in 2025 before things drifted off course.
The first obvious move is to get Ty Emberson back in the lineup.
It was always a little strange to see Mukhamadullin slide into Emberson’s right-side spot. The 6-foot-5 left-shot defender seemed like a natural seventh option, especially since Edmonton’s right side wasn’t exactly a hole after Connor Murphy arrived at last year’s deadline.
But Emberson quietly did a lot of the dirty work last season. He finished second among Oilers defencemen in limiting both goals against and expected goals against per hour, and his goal share was exactly 50 per cent.
He gave them a dependable stay-at-home presence and a useful penalty killer.
There’s also a reason to revisit the Walman-Emberson pairing. In the 2026 playoffs, they outscored the Anaheim Ducks 4-2 as Edmonton’s third pair and owned a 56 per cent expected goal share. That kind of showing deserves another look.
Mukhamadullin will get his chances this season - Babcock likes his defencemen to be “trees” rather than “shrubs” - but right now, he looks like a player who could use a night in the press box. The most likely move is that the man who earned his place with last season’s play, Emberson, draws in on Saturday.
Once that happens, the real question becomes who should skate beside Walman.
Another run with Emberson makes sense after their playoff success. His defensive suppression paired with Walman’s mobility and offensive upside is a logical fit. But the regular-season numbers point even more strongly to Evan Bouchard.
Walman and Bouchard bring a tempting mix of passing and shooting. Both can move the puck out cleanly, and Bouchard’s ability to shut down entries and launch quick counters fits well with Walman, who likes to jump into the play.
The small-sample data looks encouraging, and Bouchard’s current form only adds to the appeal. He may be the defender Walman needs most to get his confidence back.
There’s also a sleeper option in Mattias Ekholm.
Before he came to Edmonton in 2023, Ekholm had some experience on the right side with the Nashville Predators. If he can still handle that role, his puck-retrieval work could help Walman.
According to All Three Zones, Ekholm ranked in the 96th percentile in D-zone retrievals last season and the 91st percentile in successful retrievals. He remains one of the best in the league in that area, while Walman’s retrieval numbers have been sliding over the past few years.
That decline is hard to explain, especially because Walman faced tougher usage in Detroit than he does now. Still, Ekholm could help stabilize that part of the game. Playing him on his off side would be unconventional, but he has already done excellent work as the primary retriever next to a puck-mover like Bouchard, and that’s something worth considering.
The bigger picture is simple enough: Edmonton changed coaches because change was needed, and the people in charge knew it. But change also brings a learning curve.
Babcock said he doesn’t know his players yet, and now that the real bullets are flying, he has to figure it out fast. If he lands on the right combination, this blue line should still be good enough to handle the fight ahead.
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