Stan Bowman comes across as calm, measured and thoughtful, but he’s got a ruthless side. In fact, no GM in the NHL can survive without one.

Bowman’s hard edge came out last year when he repeatedly got rid of below average players, the churn starting in the 2025 off-season and not relenting until the 2025-26 regular season had ended, with ten roster players moved out in total during that time.

Much of Bowman’s work was aimed at finding the right role players to complement Edmonton’s Top 6 aces, Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Zach Hyman. This focus made sense because the overall play of Edmonton’s Bottom 6 had deteriorated significantly from its high point in the 2023-24 regular season, when the group managed to out-score the opposition at even strength.

There’s been much talk since coach Mike Babcock took over the team about the Oilers forwards having more defined roles and giving more playing time to Edmonton’s  Bottom 6 players.

Bowman has worked overtime on this same issue for more than a year, with the changes and churn in Bottom 6 players continuing right up until this 2026-27 training camp, with Bowman’s recent signing of Bottom 6 forward Alex Formenton.

It all adds up an extreme makeover for that part of the squad.

The churn started last year when Noah Philp was waived and David Tomasek released from his contract to play in Europe. Next, Andrew Mangiapane was traded away to Chicago and Mattias Janmark put on Long Term Injured Reserve so he could get surgery.

These players had something in common last season: they were all under-performing (at least if you go by their Grade A shots plus-minus metrics at even strength) and they had all ended up at the bottom end of the Edmonton roster.

Among the forwards, Trent Frederic was the only attacker to avoid getting waived or traded when he under-performed for a lengthy period of time, but that only happened because a) Edmonton was so heavily invested in Frederic, who had just signed an eight-year deal, and b) his play picked up significantly as he recovered from injury through the year.

During the season, Edmonton called up Josh Samanski and traded for Jason Dickinson and Colton Dach.

The make-over continued in the summer with Edmonton saying good-bye to veteran free agents Adam Henrique and Curtis Lazar and to depth winger Roby Jarventie. The team also moved on from Jack Roslovic, who had played Top 6 minutes last year, but was supplanted in his second line role by the end of the year by Kasperi Kapanen.

Edmonton brought in two new Bottom 6 forwards, free agents Mathieu Joseph and Formenton.

Essentially, Edmonton will have five new Bottom 6 players year over year, with Dickinson, Formenton, Samanski, Dach and Joseph all in this role now.

There’s been a massive difference in results when the Top 6 has been on the ice in the past three seasons as compared to the Bottom 6.

For example, last year the Oilers Top 6 collectively had a 53.6 Goals For%, but the Bottom 6 had just a 42.5 Goals For%.

In 2024-25, the numbers were 55.4 GF% for the Top 6, 47.7 GF% for the Bottom 6.

In 2023-24 under Knoblauch, it was 59 GF% to 52 GF%.

The entire team has slid in GF% at even strength in the past three years, but the Bottom 6 has dropped the most, from 52 GF% to 42.5 GF%,

The ice-time for the Bottom 6 at even strength didn’t change much the past three years, but the results did. No doubt this was the driver for Bowman to conduct such a complete overhaul of the Bottom 6.

It’s essentially a new group there. Now we’ll see if Babcock can get that Bottom 6 back to where Knoblauch had them in 2023-24, with a positive goal differential.

P.S. In a small sample size of 22 games, the Bottom 6 had a better GF% in the 2025 playoffs than the Top 6, 58.1 GF% to 56.7%.

That was a second high point for the Bottom 6 group after its strong 2023-24 regular season play under Knoblauch. But Bowman lacked the cap space to keep around strong role players like Corey Perry and Connor Brown after the 2025 playoffs. And Henrique’s game fell off fast last season, while Vasily Podkolzin was promoted from the Bottom 6 to the Top 6.