Oilers Have Potential

The Oilers won't have a entirely new look, if you were to take a peek at the team that they have signed on below, but there is that notable difference of having Nikolai Khabibulin in net, instead of Dwayne Roloson. In theory, that should be a pretty big improvement to the team, that failed to make the playoffs in 2009. Otherwise, the team will look to some other faces and hope that they can land Dany Heatley this week, which should provide them with a lot of offense.

Forwards	Defense	Goaltenders
Ales Hemsky	Sheldon Souray	Nikolai Khabibulin
Shawn Horcoff	Tom Gilbert	Jeff Deslauriers
Patrick O'Sullivan	Lubomir Visnovsky
Sam Gagner	Steve Staios
Andrew Cogliano	Jason Strudwick
Dustin Penner	Steve MacIntyre
Robert Nilsson
Ethan Moreau
Marc Pouliot
Fernando Pisani
Zach Stortini

The Oilers are not sitting in a desperate situation against the cap, but if the Heatley deal is swung, then they might have a couple of questions to answer, depending on what goes the other way. So far, the 19 players that they have signed above, comes at a cap hit of $50.7 million, which leaves them a fair bit of space left to maneuver under.

Over the past couple weeks, the Oilers did sign a few depth players, but it doesn't look like there is anyone really notable to speak of at the moment. The team does have restricted free agents to sign in Gilbert Brule and Ladislav Smid on the ledger, but they don't seem to be in a big hurry to have them on the books.

Edmonton should be a better team with Khabibulin in net, but does Edmonton make Khabibulin a better fantasy keeper? That's the big question, in my opinion. Still lots of time this summer to keep an eye on things, so don't get too far ahead of yourself just yet.