All presumes that there will be a toilet paper shortage. Fear makes people do weird things.
Keeping a 7D for 4.6M doesnt save them from having to find an expensive top 4 replacement anyways. Oilers of old would buy all the toilet paper and keep using it to plug the waterline then wonder why it floods anyways. Glad it see some other team do that.
The Oilers were in control of the toilet paper market until they took their eyes off all external warning signs of impending disaster. Complacency and non-action on their controlled toilet paper and poof someone comes in and steals it. That safe, controlled stash is gone and its your own damn fault for the mess in aisle 1.
Once upon a time the Oilers of old pro-actively signed their young, pedigree talent earned in blood with progressive contracts through peak year performance. Largely worked out for them including a guy who's earned a ginormous raise which is coming due.
Their super agent leader who I am quite bullish on and the new GM hired because he managed a Cup winner through the perils of trying to sustain it were caught asleep and lost control over their cost controllable restricted free agents. Big cap bump in for first time since real world plague; GM and league warnings times were ripe for poaching; running up a cap deficit while offering their two best young NHLers hardline $1.2 million dollar deals and sitting back for status quo way it's always been done passive negotiation bit them on the ass.
Like other Oilers of old they now spin to marginal replacements with a defense is worse; cupboards are threadbare for depth support; and the Arizona Coyotes alumni group (the bad Arizona Coyotes teams) are the right side of an NHL defense that's gotten worse.
If only this situation could have been avoided. Oh wait... it could have been.