- Oilers signed Alex Formenton to a one-year deal worth $850,000
- It is his first NHL contract since 2022 and Edmonton’s second lightning-rod move of the offseason
- Read below for where all five members of Canada’s 2018 World Junior group stand now
Alex Formenton is back in the NHL.
The Edmonton Oilers announced Wednesday morning that they signed the 26-year-old forward to a one-year contract carrying an $850,000 cap hit, the league minimum:
He last skated in an NHL game in April 2022. His contract with Ottawa ran out that summer, and the Senators held his exclusive signing rights until they gave them up earlier this year, which turned him into an unrestricted free agent.
Formenton was one of five players from Canada’s 2018 World Junior team charged with sexual assault over a night in London, Ontario, that followed the team’s gold medal win. A judge acquitted all five in July 2025.
Where Formenton separates from the rest of that group is his standing with Hockey Canada. An independent appeal board ruled in August that all five breached the federation’s code of conduct, and four of them stay suspended from national team programs into 2026, 2027, 2028 and 2030. Formenton was reinstated on the spot.
Here is where the five sit today:
- Alex Formenton: signed with Edmonton on Wednesday
- Carter Hart: signed with Vegas last October and took the Golden Knights to the Stanley Cup Final
- Dillon Dube: signed a one-year deal with St. Louis on July 1
- Michael McLeod: under contract with Avangard Omsk of the KHL
- Cal Foote: still a free agent after Farjestad backed out of his SHL deal
On the ice, Formenton spent three of the last four seasons with HC Ambri-Piotta in the Swiss National League, putting up 33 goals and 52 points in 88 league games and winning the Spengler Cup in 2022. He sat out all of 2024-25 while the trial played out, working construction instead.
His NHL resume is 23 goals and 16 assists in 109 games, and most of that came in 2021-22, when he scored 18 goals and 32 points in 79 games for the Senators.
Edmonton’s hockey case for this is small but real. Matt Savoie and Mattias Janmark are both unavailable for the start of camp, and both kill penalties, so Stan Bowman needed a body for that job. Nobody had Formenton on the shortlist.
This is the second move of the offseason to put Edmonton under a spotlight it did not ask for, after the Mike Babcock hire. Bowman took both swings anyway, and now his room gets to answer for this one all through training camp.
