Oilers sign Jason Garrison

As per TSN’s Bob McKenzie, the Edmonton Oilers have signed D Jason Garrison to a one-year pact for $650k:

The Oilers have not yet confirmed whether this deal includes an NMC, as per their usual modus operandi.

Garrison, 33, spent the bulk of last season playing for the Chicago Wolves of the AHL after being waived by Las Vegas after just 8 games. The veteran rearguard posted respectable counting stats of 8-20-28 in 58 GP in the minors last season, and has apparently done enough through a handful of preseason games against similar competition to earn a contract. Good for him. I’m not quite sure that it’s good for the Oilers yet, however. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s bad.

Garrison looks like he’ll deputize on the bottom pairing every so often, while theoretically having a skill set that might see him playing spot duty on the second powerplay unit as well. There isn’t much risk (other than him being bad, which is very real), and all he cost the Oilers was money, so you can sort of understand their thinking here. Given that the alternative was having both Ethan Bear and Evan Bouchard in the NHL full-time, it seems prudent to secure some depth in the event that either of them struggles, is injured, or in Bouchard’s case, is sent down after nine games. The problem appears to be thinking that Jason Garrison is the right guy to provide that depth.

As per Micah Blake McCurdy (@ineffectivemath) via twitter:

So yeah. Great. The Oilers add a suboptimal player at the margins again, because that’s what they do almost every single time they aren’t dealing proper players for peanuts.

There are also rumors floating around today that F Alex Chiasson is going to be signed as well, so stay tuned.