Oilers Just Made A Rare Draft Bet On Windsor Teammates

The Edmonton Oilers aim to strike tandem success as they draft Windsor Spitfires teammates Robinson and Harvey, hoping to continue the legacy of uniting promising pairs.

The Edmonton Oilers left the 2026 NHL Entry Draft in Buffalo with a neat little Windsor connection baked into their class. On Saturday, June 27, they used their third and fourth picks of the draft - and did it less than an hour apart - to take two Windsor Spitfires teammates: defenceman Andrew Robinson at 133rd overall in the sixth round, then forward Caden Harvey at 180th overall in Round 7.

That kind of back-to-back move gives the draft board a little extra texture. Two players who spent the season together in major junior are now headed into the same NHL organization, and both arrive with plenty of production from Windsor behind them.

Robinson, an 18-year-old from Oakville, Ont., is listed at 6-foot and 190 pounds. He put up nine goals and 15 assists in 63 regular-season games in 2025-26, while finishing second on the Spitfires with a plus-36 rating.

In the playoffs, he added two goals and six assists across 13 games as Windsor reached the second round of the 2026 OHL Playoffs. Robinson was left off NHL Central Scouting’s midterm list of North American skaters, then landed 205th on the final ranking.

He has committed to Providence for the 2027-28 NCAA Division 1 season.

Harvey, meanwhile, was a steady presence for Windsor all season long. The 18-year-old centre from Beaver, Penn., played in all 68 regular-season games and finished with 11 goals, 23 assists and a plus-26 rating.

He was just as durable in the postseason, appearing in every playoff game and collecting six points, split evenly between three goals and three assists. At 6-foot-1 and 183 pounds, Harvey was ranked 188th on NHL Central Scouting’s final list, 10 spots lower than his midterm position.

He is committed to Penn State for the 2027-28 NCAA Division 1 season.

The pair’s path through Windsor also fits into a wider Oilers draft pattern, even if it’s a rare one. Before Saturday, Edmonton had taken only five players from Windsor in its previous 47 NHL Drafts.

Taylor Hall remains the biggest name from that group, going first overall in 2010 and spending six seasons with the Oilers before being traded to the New Jersey Devils in 2016. The other Windsor players selected by Edmonton were Blair Barnes at 126th overall in 1979, Shawn Babcock at 48th in 1980, Steve Gibson at 157th in 1992, and Peter Sarno at 141st in 1997.

Sarno appeared in seven NHL games, six of them with Edmonton. Barnes played his lone NHL game with the Los Angeles Kings. Gibson and Babcock never reached the NHL.

Edmonton has, however, shown a long history of pairing up teammates on draft day. Across its NHL history, the club has picked players from the same team in the same year more than a dozen times. In 2004, it even selected three Kamloops Blazers teammates - Devan Dubynk, Max Gordichuk and Roman Teslyuk - in the same draft.

The only teammates the Oilers drafted who later played together in Edmonton were Magnus Paajarvi and Anton Lander, who had been with Swedish club Timra IK before Edmonton took them in the first and second rounds, respectively, in 2009.

For now, Robinson and Harvey head back to Windsor with their next season still ahead of them. The Oilers would surely welcome the idea of seeing the two Spitfires line up together again down the road, even if the odds are long for sixth- and seventh-round picks to carve out a lengthy NHL run.

In Other News...

Oilers Just Got Linked To A Cap Crunch Gamble Up Front

The Oilers are again being mentioned as a team that could take a swing up front, this time with Jesperi Kotkaniemi surfacing as a possible offseason target as Carolina looks to reshape its roster and clear room under the cap. Edmontons interest makes sense on paper because the club has been searching for more help at forward while also living with its own cap pressures, which makes any potential addition a balancing act from the start.

A move like this would almost certainly need Carolina to absorb a chunk of the contract to make the math work, and that kind of arrangement is exactly why these talks tend to stay complicated until late in the process. For Edmonton, the appeal is obvious enough, but the real question is whether the price and the retained salary line up well enough for a team that has to be careful with every bit of flexibility it has left. [Read more 🡒]

Oilers Suddenly Have A Drew Doughty Question Worth Asking

A Drew Doughty conversation is suddenly worth having again, and for Edmonton it starts with the simple reality that the Kings veteran is not locked in the way marquee defensemen usually are. Elliotte Friedmans reporting has opened the door just enough to make the idea linger, especially with Doughty carrying a seven-team trade list and the Oilers always looking at ways to reshape the blue line around their window.

Darnell Nurse adds the other half of the equation, because his contract situation gives Edmonton a rare bit of flexibility if the right hockey trade ever surfaced. Nothing is confirmed and the whole thing remains speculative, but when a deal can be framed around two established defensemen and meaningful cap consequences, it is the kind of possibility that gets teams, and fans, wondering how far it might realistically go. [Read more 🡒]

Oilers Face A Tough Free Agency Call On Familiar Pest

Mason Marchment has spent the better part of his career carving out the same kind of niche that tends to draw interest in Edmonton: a winger who can score, get under opponents skin and make life uncomfortable in the hard areas of the ice. For the Oilers, that combination is easy to understand. He brings a track record of finishing chances and an edge that can fit alongside skilled forwards, which is why he keeps coming up as a plausible offseason target.

The harder part is sorting out the cost of adding that kind of player, because Marchments game has always carried some baggage with it. He moves around the league with a reputation as a pest, and the concerns are not about whether he can bother opponents - it is whether his penalties and defensive impact outweigh the offense when the games tighten up. Edmonton can use more scoring support, but deciding whether Marchment is the right kind of it is exactly the kind of free agency question that lingers into summer. [Read more 🡒]