It’s easy to feel confident in the middle with Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins signed up for more than ten years. Comfort, according to Edmonton’s recent trade history, may have cost the organization genuine depth.
Because there has been much discussion about whether to put McDavid and Draisaitl together on one line this season, the subject carries more weight. Real open issue is who really plays 2C and 4C, while Jason Dickinson is in charge of checking center responsibilities.
Even though Nugent-Hopkins has been an essential member of Edmonton’s team for 15 seasons, his optimal career trajectory probably doesn’t involve being a second-line center. Rather, it is slipping alongside Dickinson on the third line to the wing.
Despite his potential as a defensively sound fourth-line center, it remains to be seen if the new coaching staff will keep Josh Samanski. Judging him to be physically lacking would be a grave error considering what he really brings to the position.
In retrospect, trading O’Reilly and McLeod seems expensive.
Given the organization’s recent history, the sad irony is that all of this indicates that Edmonton will likely have to get one or two centers through trade as this season goes on.
Sam O’Reilly and Ryan McLeod, two young centers with great potential, have already been traded by Edmonton in exchange for smaller wingers with more points.
Although McLeod was replaced by Matt Savoie, who is turning into a tenacious and productive top-six winger, Savoie is not the same caliber second-line center that McLeod has become in Buffalo.
With Tampa Bay, O’Reilly could realistically move into a center position this season. Isaac Howard, who may or may not stay with the Oilers, was transferred by Edmonton, but only as a winger, not as a centerman.
This means that Edmonton’s center pipeline is primarily dependent on a few players who are still improving in Bakersfield, the most notable of whom are AHL newcomers Owen Michaels and 20-year-old William Nicholl, who is now ranked 14th overall in the Cult of Hockey’s prospect rankings.
Although he was a seventh-round pick, Nicholl gained a large following owing to his incredible speed.
Before the draught, Elite Prospects characterized him as a forward who “shows unrelenting pace, textbook details, and flashes of high-level offence,” someone who wins body positioning in every situation on the ice.
“More of a bottom-six, two-way physical type” with a real knack for finding the net” was how Mark Henry of Dobber Hockey described him after his 2024–25 season.
Allan Mitchell of The Athletic stated that Nicholl was third in OHL team scoring that same season despite being a seventh-round selection, describing it as remarkable considering how competitive that league actually is.
Bruce Curlock, an Oilers prospect guru, described Nicholl’s draft year in which he was lost in a strong London lineup, scoring only 20 points in 65 games before finally receiving a genuine opportunity the following season after other players moved on.
However, Edmonton nevertheless signed him to an entry-level contract and sent him to Bakersfield after he recovered from a shoulder injury and subsequent surgery that caused him to miss the first half of his next OHL season.
Curlock’s newest read on Nicholl, which he shared with Bob Stauffer on Oilers Now, concentrated on a single equipment.
“He is incredibly fast, nearly on every shift… He possesses one NHL talent. And I don’t mean that he can’t get better, but he has one right now and he can soar.”
Nicholl wins the 3C position in Bakersfield hands down this season, plays a genuine two-way game, and adds an even-strength point every few games.
For a seventh-round pick who is only 20 years old, that is a big task. However, given how shallow Edmonton’s genuine center depth appears at the moment, properly developing Nicholl in Bakersfield may prove to be more important for the team’s future than it does right now.
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