Jake Walman is back in the press box, and the Edmonton Oilers are clearly running out of patience.
For the fifth time in the last seven games, the defenseman is a healthy scratch, a tough look for a player the Oilers expected to lean on much more heavily. Instead, the second-highest paid blueliner on the roster is watching while others take his minutes, and when he does dress, he’s been limited to under 14 minutes a night in a bottom-pairing role.
That usage tells the story. Edmonton doesn’t trust him in key moments right now, and the longer this goes on, the more it feels like the organization is trying to send a message he hasn’t fully absorbed.
Mike Babcock was direct when asked about the decision on Monday morning after the skate. He said Walman simply isn’t giving the team what it needs.
“I just think the bottom line is: what do you do without the puck? What chances are you involved in?
What do you do when you have it? And it’s a hard, hard league, and so each and every night, we evaluate the whole situation, and unlike you guys who watch it once, we watch it over and over again with five people, and so we got a pretty good handle on the thing,” explained head coach Mike Babcock after the morning skate on Monday.
“Then, lots of times, the analytics from the outside aren’t what we have on the inside, and so what we do is we just try to make the best decisions to help the team be successful. At the same time, we’re trying to build everybody up so they can be the best version of themselves.
And sometimes it’s hard when it’s not going your way.”
The Oilers are justified in making the call they’ve made. By the way things have gone, Edmonton’s defense looks better when Walman is out of the lineup than when he’s in it. But that doesn’t change the bigger issue: this is still a player the Oilers need to get right.
At this point, it’s not just about being a step slow or drifting out of position. The questions seem to go deeper than that, with his effort level and willingness coming under the microscope.
The clearest sign of that came from NHL.com, which noted that Walman hasn’t thrown a hit all year. That kind of detail is exactly the sort of thing a coach notices, and Babcock’s comments about what happens without the puck line up with that concern.
If Walman can’t turn it around soon, the conversation around him is going to shift from lineup decisions to his future in Edmonton. He’s in the first year of a seven-year extension, and that makes this situation even more awkward if the healthy scratches keep piling up.
Walman does have trade protection, but if he believes he’s lost the coaching staff’s trust, a fresh start may start to look appealing. From the Oilers’ side, moving a $7 million player who isn’t playing would also make plenty of sense.
There’s still time for this to be repaired, and it starts with Walman getting another chance and doing something with it. But the margin is shrinking fast.
He can’t keep giving the coaches reasons to sit him. He has to start giving them reasons to play him.
If that doesn’t happen, keeping him around starts to make a lot less sense.
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Oilers Need To Fix A Frustrating Home Problem Fast
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At home, the concern has been less about talent and more about execution, with coach Mike Babcock and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins both stressing the need for steadier defensive play over the full game. The Oilers have not hidden from the issue, and they know the margin for error shrinks quickly when the puck starts ending up in their net too often. For a team with playoff expectations, solving that problem in its own building is becoming less of a talking point and more of a requirement. [Read more 🡒]