The Athletic has live coverage of the 2025 NHL trade deadline.
Oilers get: Defenseman Jake Walman
Sharks get: Conditional first-round pick in 2026, forward Carl Berglund
Shayna Goldman: Do you hear that, Steve Yzerman? Moving Walman apparently doesn’t require a sweetener of a second-round pick! In fact, a team is willing to give up a first-round pick for him.
The Red Wings trading Walman in a salary dump really wasn’t indicative of his level of play. But he definitely raised the bar this season in San Jose. Playing defense on a rebuilding team isn’t an easy task. Walman played matchup minutes for the Sharks and excelled despite his usage, with very little two-way support around him. He’s hovering around break-even in expected and actual goals at five-on-five this season, and had a positive impact on both ends of the ice relative to his teammates.
Walman’s workload should change in Edmonton, because the Oilers don’t need him to be their No. 1 D or play top minutes. Maybe playing a more manageable workload (and having more support) will help Walman clean up other areas of his game, like his zone entry defense.
That Walman can step up into a bigger role if necessary is key here for Edmonton. Not everyone on this blue line is built to play more, which is why the pairs are structured and deployed in a very particular way. To have an extra lefty could be important if Mattias Ekholm doesn’t get back on track after trending down over the last month.
Spending a first-rounder for someone who isn’t expected to play on the first pair is steep, but Walman isn’t a rental. He has a reasonable cap hit for another season, and his workload could rise if Ekholm’s recent play is part of a bigger age-related decline.
This is some really solid business for the Sharks. It’s another example of San Jose leveraging its cap space to take on another team’s salary dump, and turning it into a first-round pick — similar to the Mikael Granlund and Cody Ceci trade with Dallas last month.
Moving on from Walman can help facilitate the rebuilding process; loading up on draft picks, which is the name of the game. The only drawback is that it takes an important player out of the lineup. A rebuild can be a painful process, and management has to walk a fine line between tanking and actually harming the development of the team’s up-and-coming talent. The one worry is that the environment will get too bleak in San Jose, similar to what’s going on in Chicago. Whether at the deadline or in free agency, the Sharks need to add more veteran talent and reclamation projects to play around their young core.
Oilers grade: B+
Sharks grade: A-
Harman Dayal: One of Edmonton’s biggest flaws in the playoffs last year was its lack of quality defensive depth beyond the top pair of Ekholm and Evan Bouchard. The second pair of Darnell Nurse and Ceci was flat-out unplayable at times, with Philip Broberg, who’s no longer around after signing an offer sheet with St. Louis, forced to stabilize things by playing on his off-side late during the club’s run to the Stanley Cup Final.
Walman isn’t a perfect fit — he’s another lefty and his game can be a bit inconsistent — but he represents a huge upgrade for the Oilers at a reasonable cost, especially considering the extra year of term he has left on a modest $3.4 million cap hit.
Walman is a gifted skater and puck mover. He first broke out as a top pair defender with Moritz Seider on the Red Wings in 2022-23. His 2023-24 campaign was up-and-down but he was inexplicably dumped to the Sharks for negative value, where he’s authored a really strong bounce-back season.
I know some have thought that the Oilers need more of a shutdown type of defenseman rather than a smooth-skating puck mover, but there are two reasons I still like Walman on this blue line.
Firstly, when I look at why Edmonton’s back end struggled last year, the biggest issue wasn’t so much that it lacked defensive prowess but that the blue line lacked another puck mover besides Brett Kulak in the bottom four. Time and time again, the second pair got hemmed in defensively in the playoffs because Nurse and Ceci couldn’t break the puck out against heavy forechecking teams. Walman’s speed and puck transportation skill is going to help the Oilers spend far less time defending in the first place.
Secondly, Walman’s defensive play should hold up just fine considering his matchups should be significantly easier in Edmonton compared to his previous stops. In Detroit, he and Seider absorbed some of the toughest matchups in the NHL. This year, he was a do-it-all No. 1 defenseman on the Sharks. Coming to Edmonton, he won’t have to defend against superstars and top lines nearly as often.
The Oilers can either play Walman on the right side with Nurse, which would be a solid fit since the latter typically performs best with a puck-mover. Or they can stick Kulak, who’s excelled whenever used on the right side, next to Nurse full-time and let Walman drive his own pair further down the lineup. Kulak and Nurse have controlled 56 percent of expected goals in their five-on-five minutes together, but the problem was that using Kulak in that second pair role left the third pair very vulnerable.
For the Sharks, it’s amazing how general manager Mike Grier created value out of thin air. Detroit paid San Jose a second-round pick to take Walman on in the first place — which was a baffling move on the Red Wings’ part at the time — and now they’ve added a first-round pick to that haul.
Carl Berglund isn’t really a value acquisition — he’s a 25-year-old undrafted forward with just 12 points in 45 AHL games this year. It must have been tempting for the Sharks to hang on to Walman and sell him at next year’s deadline given how little veteran talent they have, but the opportunity to fetch a first-round pick was understandably too enticing to pass up.
The Sharks have a lot of work to do in the summer to replenish the supporting cast around Macklin Celebrini and company to maintain a baseline level of competitiveness next season, especially on the barren blue line, but San Jose’s doing an impressive job of accumulating assets.
Oilers grade: B+
Sharks grade: A-
(Photo: John E. Sokolowski / Imagn Images)
