Many moons ago, Lowetide coined the term “The Leftorium” when referring to the Edmonton Oilers blue line.

A decade ago, the Oilers had a plethora of left-shot defencemen who were competing for minutes: Andrej Sekera, Oscar Klefbom, Brandon Davidson, Andrew Ference, Darnell Nurse, Griffin Reinhart, Nikita Nikitin, and the list went on.

Heading into the 2026-27 season, the Oilers find themselves with a similar, but slightly different issue. They have eight defencemen on one-way contracts, all of whom are NHL players right now, and all of whom are waiver-eligible.

Mattias Ekholm, Evan Bouchard, Jake Walman, Connor Murphy, and Ryan Shea are all locks to be on the roster, and daily drivers of play for D.J. Smith’s defence. But the next group becomes muddied.

Ty Emberson likely has the inside track to being the third-pairing, right-shot defenceman given........

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