Oilers get good news on veteran center

Having been placed on LTIR only a week ago, Mattias Janmark’s placement was retroactive to when he suffered his shoulder injury on Oct. 26, meaning his requirements have now been satisfied. In preparation for the team’s game Wednesday night against the Carolina Hurricanes, the Edmonton Oilers announced that Janmark will draw back into the lineup.

Suffering an injury just two weeks into the 2023-24 season, Janmark has been able to play in only seven games so far this year, scoring zero points while playing a bit more than 13 minutes a night. Although Edmonton has been a tad better lately, the Oilers produced a 1-5-1 record when Janmark was in the lineup earlier in the year.

Janmark should once again slot into the bottom six for Edmonton, given its depth, being a part of one of the most underperforming facets of their team. With varying amounts of games played, Janmark is one of four Oilers forwards to not score a point this year.

Historically speaking, throughout his career, Janmark has been an effective depth scorer for nearly every team he has suited up for, including last year in Edmonton. In 66 regular-season games, Janmark scored 10 goals and 15 assists, finishing seventh on the team in scoring among forwards.

Although he has failed to score 40 points once in his career, but regularly scores between 10-15 goals, and 15-20 assists effectively since his rookie campaign back in 2015-16. Even on the defensive side of the puck, Janmark has carried an average expected +/- of 2.2 throughout his career, showing he is not a detrimental forward in the defensive zone by any means.

Moving forward, if the Oilers are hoping to get back into contention by the end of the season, they will be relying on Janmark heavily to generate more offense out of the bottom six. The problems that exist for Edmonton are clearly multi-faceted in nature, but to get one of those back on track may create a domino effect for the rest of the year.