Stan Bowman has made his second significant transaction since joining the Edmonton Oilers as general manager.
Bowman’s first great one occurred on August 18, 2024, when he traded a fourth-round draft selection to the Vancouver Canucks for Vasily Podkolzin, then 23 years old and regarded as a potential grinder for Edmonton’s fourth line. Podkolzin has earned his way up to the top line with Connor McDavid and into the hearts of Oilers fans due to his aggressive performance. The Oiler known as Podzilla has become a local folk legend.
Bowman made his second major transaction on March 3, 2026, trading a second-round draft choice to the Chicago Blackhawks for defensive d-man Connor Murphy, a 33-year-old who is now in his 13th NHL season. Chicago also agreed to cover half of Murphy’s $4. 4 million contract.
NHL general managers are sometimes criticized for signing or swapping for too many players from their old NHL teams. Oilers supporters will remember with great resentment how former Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli signed his old Bruins enforcer Milan Lucic to a huge contract in Edmonton, only to see Lucic’s two-way play collapse. Then there’s former Detroit GM Ken Holland, who paid a high price — two second-round draft picks — to recruit Red Wing winger Andreas Athanasiou. Athanasiou failed quickly in Edmonton.
Similar questions were raised when Bowman swapped Murphy to his previous Chicago club, a player he had obtained in a trade with the Blackhawks. However, there is little question that Murphy met a critical need for the Oilers: a large, strong, right-shot defenseman who could break up cycles and solidify the team’s shaky second pair.
On our Cult of Hockey podcast, when others were going on and on about the Oil’s top need being another winger, and the team’s management group was making noises that this was Edmonton’s top need, my colleague Kurt Leavins and I consistently argued that, sure, it would be beneficial to bring in another strong two-way forward, but it was critical to bring in another d-man.
Due to their porous defensive play, Bowman’s waiver pick-up Alec Regula and trade acquisition Spencer Stastney were unable to secure a position in the Oilers’ lineup. Edmonton’s defensive depth was poor, and its structure and fundamental play were deficient.
Eventually, Bowman and his crew agreed with us. Bowman made Murphy his first significant 2026 trade deadline acquisition.
I had little idea what to expect from Murphy, and I was wary of him being partnered with the erratic Darnell Nurse, but in his 18 games with the Oilers — a sufficient sample size to properly evaluate a player — Murphy has brought out the best in Nurse and won me over to his own remarkable abilities as a d-man.
Murphy is a tall man, standing 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighing 212 pounds, with a wide reach. He’s a subpar NHL skater, and I was concerned that I’d see a sluggish player on the ice. Instead, I see a clever one.
What are the things to enjoy? Murphy is invariably on the correct side of his cheque. He reads the game effectively and with his reach regularly knocks pucks off attackers’ sticks as passes reach them.
He’s not a puck-watcher, however. Instead, he performs with the body. Instead, he reads the script. He ensures that he is in the correct defensive position to take out an opponent’s stick and prevent that attacker from screening the goalkeeper or jumping on a rebound. Nurse would do well to copy Murphy’s strategies in this case.
Murphy is also fierce in the corners and slot, ready to knock down players to gain possession of the ball. He has expressed a desire to block shots. And, since he has a bombardier like Bouchard with the puck, he tends to make safe, cautious passes throughout each game.
When you add it all up, Edmonton has its finest defensive d-man since Adam Larsson and Kris Russell, who were both seriously underrated, manned the Oilers blueline. In reality, Murphy is the first d-man to have an outstandingly low rate of such terrible mistakes on Grade A shots against since Larsson and Russell were Oilers (including terrible line changes, turnovers, deflected shots on net, bad pinches, and giving up breakaways).
We track this type of stuff through the Cult of Hockey’s video review, which is the same tracking that had me worried about Edmonton’s defence this year and allowed me to early on identify the need for another d-man as the team’s top priority.
At even strength, Murphy makes around one-third the number of horrible errors as other d-men Nurse, Stastney, Evan Bouchard, and Jake Walman.
Murphy has committed only four such poor errors in 18 games, compared to 60 by Bouchard in 81 games, 54 by Nurse in 81 games, and 37 by Walman in 52 games.
Overall, the Murphy trade has worked out exceptionally well for the Oilers thus far. With the addition of Paul Coffey, the Oilers have seen a substantial decrease in Grade A shots against.
Of course, and this should go without saying, not all of Bowman’s trades and signings have panned out. However, if Bowman can hit at least one home run in a trade or signing each year as GM, he will have earned his place here.
Murphy is the home run for 2026, with the signings of Connor Ingram and Josh Samanski also ranking highly on the list, and the trades for Colton Dach and Jason Dickinson looking promising as well.
P. S. This year, Evan Bouchard committed errors that resulted in 12 clear breakaways at even strength and three more on the power play. This is by far the Oilers’ highest figure. If there’s one reason he won’t win the Norris Trophy, despite the fact that he is unquestionably one of the top two or three NHL d-men this year, it’s these high-profile blunders. They are precisely the sort of content that social media thrives on: brief snippets of human tragedy and grief with a clear conclusion.
