Oilers Notebook: Penguins' Marcus Pettersson likely caught attention of Edmonton's GM Stan Bowman

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If you watched Pittsburgh Penguins’ rangy defencemen Marcus Pettersson Thursday, you know why the Edmonton Oilers, along with the other Stanley Cup contenders, are seriously looking at the Swedish UFA veteran as a major add at the trade deadline.

If this was a job interview, Pettersson — who has had an up-and-down season, maybe because he keeps seeing his name on every trade board — aced it. Oilers general manager Stan Bowman and CEO Jeff Jackson were in the house for the Penguins’ 5-3 victory.

Pettersson, 28, assisted on the first two Penguins goals, had five blocks, was plus three, and was on the ice almost every shift against Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl with partner Kris Letang. He finished with 25:14 ice time, saving a late third-period goal by 29 as the puck was dribbling over the line, sweeping it to safety, so the game didn’t get to 5-4. In the third, he played one 3:05 shift, with the Penguins holding on.

The Oilers started the season looking for just a right-shot defenceman, but their net has likely gotten much wider. He could be a second-pairing guy if Darnell Nurse moves over to the right side with Brett Kulak anchoring the third pair or, at worst, a 4-5 player.

The six-foot-five beanpole (180 pounds) Pettersson shoots left, but the Oilers just need an experienced hand, with a long reach, defensively responsible for the most part, and the Swede, once a second-round draft pick of Anaheim, has averaged over 20 minutes a night the last three seasons. That’s been Pettersson’s calling card through his close to 500 games: quiet steadiness.

He’s plus 78 in his career.

In the Oilers’ 4-0 win over the Penguins here earlier in the season, an unhappy Pettersson waded in to fight Darnell Nurse, even though he’s not much of a drop-the-mitts guy. He held his own.

What’s the trade price for Pettersson?

Last year, defenceman Chris Tanev fetched prospect defenceman Artem Grushnikov (playing for Calgary’s AHL team), a second- and fourth-round draft from Dallas when the Flames moved him as a UFA rental. Tanev is better than Pettersson, but Tanev just turned 35 and Pettersson turns 29 in May.

Maybe young defencemen Beau Akey (junior in Barrie) and Paul Fischer (Notre Dame) are in play for a veteran defenceman at the deadline or farmhand Max Wanner, currently injured in Bakersfield. Forwards Matthew Savoie (AHL) and Sam O’Reilly (London Knights) are likely off the table in any deals. The Oilers have no first-round pick in 2025; it’s going to Philadelphia for moving up last June to draft O’Reilly. They have their second-rounder (Philip Broberg offer sheet compensation).

Facing the music

Something to watch for when Connor Bedard plays the Oilers Saturday in Chicago, the second of a back-to-back for the Hawks, who are in Detroit Friday: Bedard in the face-off circle where he’s getting schooled.

Bedard is riding a career-best eight-game point streak, so things are improving for the second-year Hawks’ centre offensively, but last year’s top rookie still struggles mightily on draws because he doesn’t have, as they say, man strength yet.

In his first NHL season, he was 38.9 per cent on 542 draws. This year, he’s been eaten alive though — a woeful 32.5 per cent on his 320 draws. He’s only had four games in two years where he’s finished over 50 per cent, when taking at least 10 faceoffs. The Hawks as a team are 44.2, the worst in the league; the Oilers are 53.4, which is top five.

This ‘n’ that

The Penguins once had 633 straight sell-outs from 2008 to 2021, but they’re in the bottom third in percentage of capacity this season, at 90 per cent. With McDavid in town Thursday, they only drew 17,004 in their 18,187-seat PPG Paints Arena…

Oilers best forward prospect Savoie (24 points in 29 games) is predictably the Bakersfield Condors rep at the AHL all-star game at Palm Desert Feb. 2-3. Matthew’s older brother Carter, the one-time Oilers draft pick who played two years in Bakersfield, is trying to gain some traction, currently playing in the ECHL in Greenville right now (16 points, 22 games)…

Something to keep an eye on: Oilers GM Stan Bowman drafted German-born winger Lukas Reichel in the first round in 2020 when he was Hawks manager, but he’s absolutely spinning his wheels with the Hawks. Just as Vasily Podkolzin was in Vancouver. Would Reichel be a trade fit here, with Draisaitl as his countryman instructor?

Strange stuff in Chicago with Swiss forward Philipp Kurashev. Last year, Kurashev, 25, was second in team points with 54. This year, he’s a healthy scratch and eminently available in a trade…

Travis Dermott played 16 minutes for the Wild Thursday, but it was only his fifth game since Minnesota claimed him on waivers from Oilers four weeks ago. The Wild’s defence Thursday in a 6-1 loss to the Avalanche: Dermott, David Jiricek, Jon Merrill, Zach Bogosian, Jake Middleton, and Declan Chisholm with Jared Spurgeon, Jonas Brodin, and Brock Faber out…

O’Reilly, has 37 points in 35 games for powerhouse London Knights, with 13 NHL draft picks and five players who were in the World Juniors…

Should be interesting to see if Oilers’ 2021 sixth-round draft pick winger Shane LaChance leaves a stacked Boston University team where he is team captain and signs after this sophomore season. The six-foot-five 218-pound winger was on Macklin Celebrini’s line as a freshman and currently has 18 points in 17 games. Great sixth-round pick, just as Oilers taking Michael Kesselring and John Marino in the sixth in previous drafts. Frankly, Oilers seem to pick better later in the draft. They also got Russian winger Max Berezkin, 23, (30 points in 43 games for Yaroslavl Lokomotiv) in the fifth round in 2020. He’s in the last year of his KHL contract…

The Oilers couldn’t have been happy with Akey’s usage for Canada at the World Juniors in Ottawa. Akey (Oilers’ first pick in the 2023 draft) was the team’s seventh defenceman and their least-used player when dressing for all five games. Not sure what the point is of having a player leave his junior team and barely get on the ice for a tournament…

The Oilers’ other defenseman in the tournament, Fischer played two early games for the U.S. but had some defensive issues and was scratched after that.

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