More Training Camp Cuts; Five Players Sent To Oklahoma City

On the heels of yesterday's 5-0 loss to the Blackhawks the Oilers have announced that five of the players who dressed in that game have now been assigned to the Oklahoma City Barons. With these moves the Oilers now have 23 forwards, 14 defencemen, and four goalies left in camp.

#Oilers have assigned Curtis Hamilton, Kale Kessy, Iiro Pakarinen, Jason Williams and Martin Gernat to @OKCBarons.

— Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) September 29, 2014

A couple of quick thoughts:

• I had hoped that Iiro Pakarinen might hang around a little longer battling for a spot at the bottom of the Oilers roster. I even spent some time last week working on spelling his name correctly just in case. Yesterday he skated on a line with Jordan Eberle and Anton Lander, and even though the results were good, management has decided to go another direction.
• Nobody expected Martin Gernat to make the team out of camp this season but they likely expected a better showing. Gernat struggled throughout camp, as evidenced by the fact that with no word yet on the severity of Andrew Ference's arm injury, and with Jeff Petry still dealing with a shoulder injury, the team has already decided to return him to the Barons. Clearly he's not in the team's short term plans.

If I was a betting man I'd expect the next round of cuts to be announced about this same time tomorrow morning, following tonight's Oilers/Jets game.