Magnus Pääjärvi’s name still carries a little charge for Oilers fans who lived through the H.O.P.E. era. Hall.
Omark. Pääjärvi.
Eberle. For a while, that group felt like the answer in Edmonton.
The optimism faded, but Pääjärvi remains one of the more recognizable pieces from that stretch.
Drafted 10th overall in 2009, Pääjärvi came with the kind of profile the Oilers were chasing: speed, skill and creativity, backed by strong numbers in Sweden. After being selected, he stayed home briefly before making the jump to Edmonton for the 2010-11 season.
That first year was his best in the NHL. Pääjärvi scored 15 goals and finished with 34 points in 80 games, giving the Oilers a glimpse of why he had been such a high pick.
From there, though, his role started to wobble. Over the next two seasons, he became an NHL-AHL tweener, putting up 11 goals and 24 points in 83 games for Edmonton while also recording 11 goals and 45 points in 72 games with the Oklahoma City Barons.
By the summer of 2013, the Oilers moved on. They sent Pääjärvi, along with a 2014 second-round pick and a 2015 fourth-round pick, to the St.
Louis Blues in exchange for winger David Perron and a 2015 third-round pick. Perron gave Edmonton a much bigger offensive return in parts of two seasons, scoring 33 goals and 76 points in 116 games before being dealt to the Pittsburgh Penguins for a first-round pick and Rob Klinkhammer.
Pääjärvi’s NHL career kept going after the trade, but in the same up-and-down pattern. He spent parts of five seasons in the Blues organization and scored 19 goals and 39 points in 189 NHL games. After a season-and-a-half in Ottawa, he headed overseas in 2019-20.
That move took him back into familiar company. Pääjärvi joined fellow countryman Anton Lander with the KHL’s Lokomotiv Yaroslavl and spent two years in Russia before returning to the SHL.
His first stop back was with the Malmo Redhawks in 2021-22, and then he ended up on the same team as Lander again. Both arrived at Timrå IK in 2022-23, and Pääjärvi has been there for the last four years, scoring 25 goals and 46 points in 193 games.
So what really defined his Edmonton run? Untapped upside.
The rookie season had Oilers fans buzzing in the middle of the Decade of Darkness, and it all started with a loud first impression in the preseason, when he scored a hat trick and four point game against the Tampa Bay Lightning. That was a tough bar to raise, and he never quite cleared it.
In the end, Pääjärvi found better overall seasons after leaving Edmonton. But the Oilers never got the full return on the promise that came with that 10th-overall pick.
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