Connor McDavid gets reunited with an old Ontario Hockey League teammate. 29-year-old Connor Brown signed a one-year, $4M contract with the Edmonton Oilers on Free Agent Frenzy. Calm down; not all of the $4M is counting against Edmonton’s salary cap this coming season. He’s only signed to make $775K, with $3.25M in performance bonuses. Brown was rumored to have an interest in Edmonton and even expressed that potential interest on a podcast with former Oiler Luke Gazdic.
A torn ACL limited Brown to only the first four games of the 2022/2023 regular season with the Washington Capitals. In seasons where he’s played much closer to 82 games, he’s been a 35-40 point player, including 43 points in 71 games during the 2019/2020 season before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Elliotte Freidman had reported that the signing of Brown was coming between the Oilers and the Toronto Maple Leafs, who drafted him in 2012.
When playing for the OHL’s Erie Otters, he played 199 games and put up 250 points. He was also the team captain of the Otters before McDavid was given the “C.” While nobody expects those OHL numbers again, he’s already penciled in one of the wing positions with McDavid and might see his career stats go up ever so slightly. He also knows Zach Hyman from his time in Toronto, so I expect a line match with him as well. He’s also pretty solid defensively, which should give McDavid more space for the already otherworldly offense.
