While his signing was initially deemed a wise move, the structure of his contract, featuring a league-minimum $775k salary and $3.225 million in performance bonuses, raised concerns as he approached the critical 10-game mark. Brown’s return activates a bonus that will impact next year’s salary cap as an overage from the current season. There will be pressure on him to start producing.

If he doesn’t there’s not much the Oilers can do. A demotion (outside of less ice time) isn’t likely. Giving him some rope under the new coach (one he had in Erie) is the likely outcome. Still, the team must navigate a fine line, making sure Brown gets to speed, but also doesn’t hinder the team’s chances of working themselves back into a playoff spot.

All the while, fans will be focused on how McDavid reacts to Brown’s success, or lack thereof. The narrative is already that the Oilers are too focused on keeping McDavid happy with on and off-ice decisions. More of that when it comes to Brown could be problematic.

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Edmonton Oilers took to the ice at Amalie Arena in Tampa Friday morning, in preparation for Saturday afternoon’s contest against the Lightning that kicks off a four-game southeastern road trip.

Big news in the person of RW Connor Brown, who took reps on the first line at Friday morning’s skate. He then led the post-practice stretch, a near-certain sign of a player who is set to re/join the line-up.

Brown’s next game will be his tenth of the season, thus triggering the signing bonus that was a major clause in the one-year contract he signed back on Jul 01. The $4.00 million pact will pay him the NHL minimum of $775,000 for the current season, with the rest due in the form of a $3,225,000 bonus that becomes payable once he plays 10 games. Said bonus will count against next season’s salary cap, a work-around that in theory allowed the Oilers to add a top-six forward at a fourth-line price, at least in the current campaign.

Make no mistake, the Oilers needed — and still need — a top-six calibre forward, specifically at right wing. In Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Zach Hyman, Ryan-Nugent-Hopkins and Evander Kane, the club had five forwards in the $5+ million range, but no in-house solutions to join them. In the prior 18 months Holland had been forced to trade out three different RWs — Zack Kassian, Jesse Puljujarvi, Kailer Yamamoto — whom he had previously signed to contracts of $3.0 million AAV or above, all for salary cap reasons.

What remained was a smoking crater at right wing below Hyman (himself converted back from LW), and no cap space with which to fill it. The Brown signing was an elegant solution for the current season, even as it left >80% of the price tag for next season when the cap is expected to rise significantly.

Recovering from a devastating ACL tear that cost him all but 4 games in the 2022-23 campaign (and which opened the door for a contract of this structure), Brown got off to a somewhat predictable slow start, though surely nobody could have predicted quite how slow. When he left with a leg issue midway through Game 9, not only had the 29-year-old winger not found the scoresheet, he hadn’t even been on the ice for a single Edmonton goal. His boxcar stats of 9 GP, 0-0-0, -5 left many fans feeling cold about whether he should ever get that 10th game.

A fortnight has passed since his last appearance, opening wide the window for that discussion to take hold. “What Would Vegas Do?” the most vocal critics asked, with the implication being they’d cut the player loose without a second thought.

There was zero chance this was going to happen in Edmonton. This was a contract negotiated in good faith, with Edmonton GM Kem Holland on one side of the virtual table and Brown’s then-agent Jeff Jackson on the other. Jackson was subsequently hired by owner Daryl Katz as the Oilers’ CEO of Hockey Operations. The suggestion that both men would essentially team up to stiff a respected NHL veteran might have sprouted wings in some corners, but in the real world it was never going to fly. Not Ken Holland’s style, and unthinkable from Jackson’s perspective unless he doesn’t mind sewering his reputation, never mind that of his team which may … wait for it … wish to attract other free agents some time in the future. That $3.225 million bonus is a problem, but it was designed to be next year’s problem, and there it will remain.

McLeod and Dylan Holloway, the puck was frequently moving in the right direction even as it never once found its way into the opposition net. Simply put, all three men were shooting blanks. Brown’s play was starting to come around: as per Natural Stat Trick he mustered just 2 individual high-danger chances through 6 games, then produced 7 in the 2½ games preceding his injury. But he simply could not buy a goal, nor an assist for that matter.

On the season, Brown currently ranks #1 among Oilers forwards in shot metrics like Corsi (64%) and shots on goal (62%), but dead last in goal share at 0%. In that last key category he’s tied with all 3 members of last game’s fourth line, Adam Erne, James Hamblin and Raphael Lavoie, whose respective shot shares of 34%, 41% and 43% reflect the fact that the play has been going the wrong way when they’ve been out there. Brown’s do not.