Stan Bowman targeting two true number one goalies in bold offseason plan
David Pagnotta dropped a name on Tuesday afternoon. Two names, actually. Filip Gustavsson and Jordan Binnington are on Stan Bowman's radar in Edmonton.
The Oilers finished 41-30-11. Fourteenth overall. That's not where this roster is supposed to live.
And the goaltending is exactly why. Tristan Jarry posted a .882 save percentage in 33 games. Connor Ingram landed at .898. Calvin Pickard stopped pucks at an .870 clip across 16 starts.
Three goalies. Not one above .900. You don't need analytics to see the problem.
Gustavsson is the cleaner target on paper. He went 19-15 with a .903 save percentage and four shutouts for a Wild team that finished seventh overall at 104 points. His cap hit sits at $3.75 million.
Binnington carries a heavier number. $6 million against the cap, with a .875 save percentage on a 23rd-place Blues club that scored just 231 goals. Twelve wins. Nineteen losses. That's the file Bowman would be buying.
Why would Edmonton trade for that second profile? Pedigree. Binnington has won a Cup and a Four Nations. Gustavsson has neither.
Oilers went 0-3 against the Wild this season
The head-to-head paints the picture. Edmonton lost all three meetings with Minnesota: 1-0 at home, 5-2 in St. Paul, then a 7-3 wipeout in January.
Gustavsson watched that division burn the Oilers from the other crease. Bowman saw it too. Now the GM is reportedly thinking about handing him the keys.
The cap math gets interesting. Jarry is signed. Ingram is signed. Adding a $3.75M or $6M starter means somebody from that group is moving, getting buried, or being bought out.
That's not a small piece of business in a flat-cap world. It's the entire summer plan for the front office.
There's a deeper question the Oilers haven't answered in three years. Is the goaltending the symptom or the disease? Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl keep producing. The crease keeps leaking. At some point the math runs out.
A new starter doesn't fix a defensive structure that allowed 269 goals against. But it buys the room another year of belief. Whether Gustavsson or Binnington is the right shape of bandage, that's Bowman's call.
And it's the kind of call that ends careers if it lands wrong.
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YESTERDAY
MAY 6, 2026
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| G | A | PTS | ||
| Josh Doan | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Ryan McLeod | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Zach Benson | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Bowen Byram | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Leo Carlsson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Kirby Dach | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jordan Greenway | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jansen Harkins | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Beckett Sennecke | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Mark Stone | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Nick Suzuki | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Zachary Bolduc | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Ivan Demidov | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Jack Eichel | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Chris Kreider | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Ryan Poehling | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Mattias Samuelsson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Juraj Slafkovsky | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Troy Terry | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Shea Theodore | - | 1 | 1 | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||