7 Rental Defense Trade Targets Listed for Edmonton Oilers

The Edmonton Oilers will go into training camp having lost, essentially, two defensemen that would have had an impact on their blueline this coming season.

After Philip Broberg showed immense promise while earning a regular spot for Edmonton during the Stanley Cup Finals, he signed a huge offer sheet with the St. Louis Blues this month, which the Oilers did not match. At the same time, during their deliberations on how to proceed during the last week, GM Stan Bowman also traded Cody Ceci, who averaged 20 minutes a night while playing 79 games for the Oilers last season.

It's safe to say that the Oilers need to think about bolstering their blueline during the coming campaign. Sure, they acquired young d-man Ty Emberson in the Ceci deal, but he's played just 30 NHL games, and they will need to beef up the top-four (or top-six, at least) with a known commodity this season.

With that, Josh Wegman of The Score has proposed seven rental d-men that the Oilers could target at or before this season's trade deadline:

Right-Shot Rentals:

Adam Larsson, Seattle Kraken, $4M cap hit

Will Borgen, Seattle Kraken, $2.7M cap hit

David Savard, Montreal Canadiens, $3.5M cap hit

Jeff Petry, Detroit Red Wings, $6.25M cap hit

Left-Shot Rentals:

Jakob Chychrun, Washington Capitals, $4.6M cap hit

Marcus Pettersson, Pittsburgh Penguins, $4.025M cap hit

Ivan Provorov, Columbus Blue Jackets, $6.75M cap hit

These players are all with teams that are, at best, on the bubble of contending for a playoff spot this season, and should any of them drop out of the running, some of these names could be up for grabs on the trade market, as all have expiring contracts, and in most cases, will be due for a raise that their teams might not want to explore.

In the cases of Larsson and Petry, the Oilers are quite familiar with them, as each spent five years in Edmonton at different stages of their careers.

Savard and Chychrun heard their names on the rumor mill at last year's deadline, and Chychrun, in fact, already got dealt this summer from one capital city, the Ottawa Senators, to another, in DC.

Overall, it would be hard to imagine that Bowman would be content going with his current defense corps into next year's playoffs, so we should see some movement on that front sooner or later.