The Oilers are staring at a familiar kind of problem: a young player with real upside, a strong finish to the season, and just enough uncertainty to make a long-term extension tricky.
Matthew Savoie fits that bill.
Around the NHL, clubs have been moving quickly to lock up young talent with limited resumes. Pittsburgh gave Ville Koivunen an eight-year deal with a $4 million cap hit back in early August, and a wave of similar extensions followed for Zeev Buium, Noah Östlund, Ryan Leonard and Justin Sourdif. Fraser Minten landed a seven-year deal, Braeden Bowman got six years, and Luke Evangelista signed for five.
There’s a clear pattern in that group. The players range from top-10 picks to undrafted signings, but they all share two things: they’re 24 or younger, and they’ve flashed enough promise in a relatively small sample of NHL games.
Evangelista is the veteran of the bunch at 259 games. Minten is next at 113.
Everyone else has played 92 or fewer.
Production-wise, most of them also fall into a similar range. Koivunen was the outlier at the low end with two goals in 47 games.
Buium, a defenceman, had six goals and 26 points. Bowman put up eight goals and 26 points in 54 games.
The rest landed between 11 and 20 goals and 27 to 56 points, with Evangelista again standing apart from the pack.
Savoie, though, remains unsigned despite being eligible for an extension.
Drafted ninth overall in 2022 by the Buffalo Sabres, Savoie was traded to Edmonton in the 2024 off-season. He spent most of the following season in the American Hockey League before becoming a full-time NHL player last year.
His 2025-26 season started slowly. Through his first 23 games, he had just two goals and five points.
Over the next 33 games before the Olympic break, he picked it up a bit with seven goals and 13 points. That left him with nine goals and 18 points through his first 56 games.
Then came a much different second half.
When NHL play resumed, Savoie moved into the top six and skated alongside Connor McDavid. From there, he put up nine goals and 19 points over his final 26 games, finishing with 18 goals and 37 points in 82 games. Only Evangelista, in his fourth NHL season, and Leonard, another top-10 pick, finished with more points.
That late surge is exactly why the Oilers have to take him seriously. But it’s also why they can’t rush into a deal that assumes the best-case version of Savoie is the one they’ll get every night for six or seven years.
Before the Olympic break, he was tracking toward 13 goals and 26 points - a perfectly respectable rookie season, but not the kind of production that screams long-term commitment. The upside is obvious. The proof, not so much.
There are still real questions here. Can he rebound from his off-season injury?
Who is he going to play with when the season starts? Can he produce at the same level if he isn’t riding shotgun with McDavid?
Those answers matter. So does the timing.
If Savoie pops early, or puts together another season like the one he just finished, Edmonton will need to act. But if he takes a step forward, his price only goes up.
And if he wants to bet on himself, a shorter deal could get him to free agency sooner.
That’s the tension for the Oilers. They already lost Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg to offer sheets in the same off-season they brought in Savoie, and both of those young pieces are now with the St. Louis Blues, where they’ve broken out after not fully living up to their draft slots during their Edmonton time.
If Savoie is still unsigned after the 2026-27 season, he’ll be offer-sheet eligible on July 1, 2027. Given what happened with Holloway and Broberg, Edmonton can’t afford to let another young player with this kind of potential drift into that kind of danger zone.
So yes, the Oilers don’t need to hand out a long-term contract today. But they do need a plan, and they need one soon.
If Savoie starts fast once he’s back from injury, the case for an extension gets a lot stronger. If he follows up last season with another strong showing, the conversation changes fast.
Either way, it’s one of the biggest questions hanging over Edmonton heading into 2026-27.
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