The 5 Best Landing Spots for Oilers Winger Jesse Puljujärvi

It's only been six years since the Edmonton Oilers plucked Jesse Puljujärvi with the fourth overall pick in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft, but you're forgiven if it feels longer.

Then-GM Peter Chiarelli immediately signed the strapping Finn to a three-year deal worth better than $10 million and envisioned him sliding in alongside 2015 pick Connor McDavid and bringing the franchise back toward relevance after a decade in limbo.

But it hasn't quite worked out so well.

Puljujärvi managed just 17 goals and 37 points across three seasons and 139 games and then headed back to Finland to reconsider his options and missed the 2019-20 schedule in its entirety, instead playing 72 games across four leagues in Europe.

He returned to Edmonton under the regime of now-GM Ken Holland before the 2020-21 season and had produced 29 goals and 61 points in 120 games while seeing frequent first-line minutes alongside McDavid prior to this week's start of the 2022-23 schedule.

Still, the addition of top-six forwards Zach Hyman and Evander Kane and the emergence of 2020 draft pick Dylan Holloway has made for a crowded top-six in the Oilers lineup and kickstarted suggestion that Puljujärvi might again be interested in heading elsewhere.

The B/R hockey writing team seized on that narrative to compile a list of the most logical landing spots for the 24-year-old, who's loved by Edmonton fans and champions of underlying statistics but perhaps not as much by the guys in charge.

Scroll through to see what we came up with and drop us a thought or two of your own in the comments section.

There are a lot of reasons to like Buffalo these days.

The Sabres have been languishing near the bottom of the league for a prolonged stretch of time, but it's allowed them to stockpile an enviable cache of young talent that's been drafted and worked through the system on the way to NHL ice.

It's begun making an impact there too, as evidenced by a 16-9-3 record in the final 28 games last season.

On the economic side, no team has more salary-cap room these days than the nearly $19 million available to GM Kevyn Adams. Certainly not the Oilers, who have precisely zero wiggle room and would probably welcome the chance to offload the one-year, $3 million pact Puljujärvi agreed to over the summer as a restricted free agent.

He'd fit in nicely as a 6'4", 201-pound winger alongside Tage Thompson, who scored 38 goals in 78 games last season after managing just 18 in his first 145 NHL games. And given the 10 picks Buffalo holds in the first three rounds across the next three drafts, it's not impossible to imagine Adams and Holland coming to some sort of personnel agreement.

"Having a player with his skill set in the lineup for the Sabres would be a huge benefit," Zach Rohde of The Hockey Writers wrote.

"The defensive responsibility he brings to the table would be a tremendous addition, and the string of bad luck he had will surely turn in his favor."

We'll file this one under "Swing for the Fences."

Unlike Buffalo, the idea that Puljujärvi could wind up in a Blackhawks uniform isn't solely the product of dumping him to a franchise that can better afford the cash he's due this season.

In Chicago's case, it's part of something far greater.

The suggestion that longtime franchise cornerstone Patrick Kane, who's in the final year of an existing contract with a rebuilding team, could be persuaded to head to Edmonton for a springtime Stanley Cup push has spawned any number of Oilers possibilities.

Among them is the forecast that Puljujärvi and his $3 million—along with a future No. 1 pick and a prospect or two—could head to the Blackhawks while both Chicago and a third team (in exchange for another draft pick) mitigate some of Kane's hefty $10.5 million salary and enable the Oilers to squeeze him in the cap space that Puljujärvi's exit would create.

Bob Stauffer of the Oilers Now podcast told the Edmonton Journal's David Staples that he'd be all-in on the Kane trade because of the player's skill level and the jolt it would give a team that got within four wins of a Stanley Cup Final last season.

"For me, all day you should consider doing it, absolutely," Stauffer said. "Why not? And you do it now. You go make it happen."

Ken Holland and Lou Lamoriello are two of the NHL's veteran executives.

Each has been the architect of a past Stanley Cup winner, and each has brought a new team to the postseason's final four within the last two tournaments.

So they know all the ins and outs of building a team.

Of course, it'll take all that know-how and more to engineer a deal that'd send Puljujärvi from Holland's Oilers to Lamoriello's New York Islanders, given the salary-cap constraints each team is now feeling.

Edmonton, as mentioned, is scraping the cap ceiling, while the Islanders have just more than $1.9 million of breathing room remaining.

Nevertheless, it's a deal that makes competitive sense given the overload of prolific talent at the top end of the Oilers roster and the comparative dearth in New York's top nine.

Puljujärvi would make a nice complement to Mathew Barzal, whom the Islanders recently locked up through 2031, and he could become just the third 20-something in the team's top-six along with 25-year-olds Barzal and Anthony Beauvillier.

Veteran defenseman Scott Mayfield's $1.45 million salary would balance the books if he were to be sent to Edmonton as part of a swap, and NYI Hockey Now's Stefen Rosner suggested in July that fellow 2016 draft pick Kieffer Bellows (selected 15 spots after Puljujärvi) and his $1.2 million would also work.

The Seattle Kraken were not the Vegas Golden Knights.

They did not follow the most recent expansion team's path to the brink of a Stanley Cup, instead languishing near the bottom of the Pacific Division standings thanks to both inconsistent goaltending and a prolonged lack of offensive production.

The Kraken's 213 goals in 82 games were tied for 28th-best in a 32-team league, and the 29 shots they generated per outing were one slot worse at No. 29.

So they need front-line help. And they need it badly.

Some is most certainly on the way in the forms of entry-draft selections Matty Beniers, who was picked second overall in 2021, and Shane Wright, who fell to fourth overall before Seattle grabbed him last summer in Montreal.

The 19-year-old Beniers has three points in his first two games of 2022-23, and Wright, 18, is on the roster too, though he's drawn in for just six-plus minutes of fourth-line time.

Both are tall, lanky centers who could benefit from the traffic Puljujärvi creates in front of the net, and the Kraken would certainly like it if the would-be ex-Oiler winds up like Valeri Nichushkin, a 6'4", 209-pound Russian winger who'd had just 46 goals in 343 NHL games before netting a career-best 25 in Colorado's championship season of 2021-22.

All that said, there's no place like home.

Given the short roster that the salary-cap issues have created and the injuries that are sure to crop up, it may not be a terrible idea for the Oilers to hold on to a guy like Puljujärvi.

He's popular with his teammates, familiar with coach Jay Woodcroft's system and had three shots on goal in 12:59 of ice time in Edmonton's season-opening defeat of Vancouver.

He had 14 goals and was a plus-22 with four power-play goals during the 2021-22 regular season and averaged 10:05 of ice time across 16 games in the playoffs.

Those numbers don't exactly grow on trees, and GM Holland told Oilers Now earlier this week that after a chaotic salary-cap offseason that saw Duncan Keith retire, Mike Smith go on long-term injured reserve and Zack Kassian traded to Arizona, he's leaning just as much toward running it back with Puljujärvi as finding a new home for him.

"As I was going through the entire process through the offseason, my feeling was, 'Let's get back and let's try it all over again,'" Holland said. "He's 6'4", he's 24 years of age. He got off to a great start (last season). And let's see how this thing goes."