The Edmonton Oilers have granted defenseman Philip Proberg permission to seek a trade. He played 10 games for the Oilers this year, posting no points and a -2 rating. He also played four games for the Bakersfield Condors in the AHL, scoring two points.

Broberg was originally selected by the Oilers with the eighth overall pick in the 2019 NHL Draft. The team hoped he’d be a long-term solution for the back-end but so far he hasn’t lived up to that expectation. The Oilers have come under scrutiny for picking Broberg when Spencer Knight, Trevor Zegras, Cam York, Matthew Boldy, and Cole Caufield were still on the board.

The big defenseman has played most of the last three seasons in Edmonton, totalling 79 games played with two goals and 11 points. The Oilers have decided that there is no future for Broberg in Edmonton so they let him talk to other teams to try to facilitate a trade. According to Frank Seravalli, there is significant interest around the league for the 22-year-old defenseman.

The Oilers have also made it clear that they don’t want a draft pick coming back in this trade, they want a player in a similar situation. It will likely end up being a similar deal to the Dmitri Samorukov/Klim Kostin deal that the Oilers made last season. They ended up winning that swap as Kostin was an important contributor to the Oilers’ secondary scoring last year whereas Samorukov never ended up cracking the St. Louis Blues’ lineup.

A trade involving Broberg will probably happen in the next little while and it will involve two teams attempting to salvage some value from a player who didn’t reach his potential. The Oilers could feasibly be looking for a forward, defenseman, or goalie in exchange for the young defenseman.