- Connor Murphy signs a five-year, $20.5 million extension to stay in Edmonton
- The Athletic’s Thomas Drance rips the Oilers for spending McDavid’s savings on depth
- Read below for the contract breakdown and what it means for Edmonton’s blue line
Edmonton isn’t waiting around on its own free agents.
The team re-signed defenseman Connor Murphy to a five-year, $20.5 million contract on Monday, worth $4.1 million a season. The 33-year-old could have walked to unrestricted free agency on July 1.
Not everyone is sold on the move. The Athletic’s Thomas Drance ripped the way Edmonton is spending after Connor McDavid agreed to take less to stay.
“Convincing the single most impactful individual player I’ve ever watched to leave money on the table, only to turn around and sign nearly $12 million worth of Connor Murphy, Jason Dickinson and Trent Frederic is genuinely wild work,” Drance wrote.
McDavid signed his extension before this season at a discount, with the idea that the savings would land a star to play next to him. So far Edmonton has used that room on role players, including Jason Dickinson, who got his own five-year, $20 million deal a day before Murphy.
The deal carries a full no-movement clause for the first three years before it shifts to a 16-team trade list. Here’s the full breakdown:
Murphy arrived from Chicago at the March 2 deadline. He put up four points in 20 regular-season games for the Oilers, then added three more in six playoff games before Edmonton bowed out to the Anaheim Ducks in the first round.
A right-shot, shut-down defenseman, he carries 825 NHL games on his resume. Phoenix drafted him 20th overall back in 2011.
Darnell Nurse has already requested a trade out of Edmonton, so the blue line could look very different by the fall. Whatever the Oilers do next to get McDavid real help, locking up Murphy wasn’t the swing their critics were waiting for.
