One thing that the two teams competing in this year’s Stanley Cup Final have is that neither one has any dead cap space on its books.

No buyouts. No retained salaries. Nothing. A clean sheet.

If you head over to the Edmonton Oilers PuckPedia page and scroll down a little bit, your eyes will eventually find the buyout penalties from the Jack Campbell contract.

$2.6 million for the 2026-27 season, followed by $1.5 million for each of the next three seasons.

Having dead money on the books is nothing new for the Oilers, though. Before Campbell, it was the James Neal buyout, and before that, the likes of Andrej Sekera and Benoit Pouliot.

Good organizations aren’t forced to buy out players because they simply don’t sign bad contracts to begin with. That is something that the Oilers have really struggled with throughout the Connor McDavid era.

As one of the most consequential offseasons in franchise history begins, Oilers general manager Stan Bowman is faced with the task of improving this team despite having a lack of assets and not a lot of cap space to work with.

And there are still some bad contracts on the books.

If Bowman wants to improve the........

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