The 2025–26 Edmonton Oilers are a very different type of team from the team 20 years ago in 2005–06, but one similarity is the “three-headed monster” in net. That team initially had Jussi Markannen, Ty Conklin, and Mike Morrison on the NHL roster until the team acquired Dwayne Roloson. That acquisition led to the team waiving Morrison, who was then picked up by the Ottawa Senators. But the team still continued to carry the three remaining goalies for the rest of the season.

This year, the Oilers swapped their starting goalie, Stuart Skinner, for Tristan Jarry. But an injury to Jarry just three games into his Oiler career meant the team had to call up Connor Ingram. Ingram has been impressive in his return to the NHL, going 5–3–1 with a 0.917 save percentage.

That performance has left the Oilers in a pickle, as they are running a three-headed monster with Jarry, Ingram, and Calvin Pickard. Pickard has played in six games since the acquisition of Jarry, but hasn’t played since January 8.

This begs the question of what exactly the Oilers should do. We asked Oil Country what they would do if they were in GM Stan Bowman’s shoes.

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Trade Calvin Pickard

The overwhelming choice with 62.1% of the votes was to trade Pickard. This makes sense given that Pickard requires waivers to be sent down, and so if you can acquire an asset for him rather than losing him for nothing, that would be the more prudent move.

Of course, the issue is whether anyone would trade anything for Pickard? His 0.871 save percentage puts him 77th in the league (although that is higher than Olympians Frederik Andersen and Jordan Binnington, to be fair). The previous two years, though, Pickard was a more than serviceable backup and especially showed himself capable of stepping up in the playoffs. That could certainly hold value to a team looking for some depth come for a playoff run.

Granted, the Oilers would also like him for depth, and so what would be the price for them to forego that black ace third stringer? Is a seventh-round pick worth it? Maybe a fifth is enticing enough? It’s definitely a bit of a pickle (pun intended).

Send him down to the Condors

About one-third of fans would send Pickard down to the Bakersfield Condors, which would be the best option…other than that pesky waivers thing.

If he manages to go through, then you get the benefit of Pickard being able to play games and keep in shape. There is one potential downside in this case, however. The Oilers have another goalie named Connor who has been very impressive: Connor Ungar is 6–0–0 with a ridiculous 0.955 save percentage. Ungar was having a great ECHL season prior to getting called up to the AHL as well, playing for three different teams and posting a 0.944 on two of them and a 0.945 on the other.

So, if you send down Pickard, does taking time away from Ungar become an issue? The Oilers also have Matt Tomkins down there, and so does that potentially mean sending Ungar down to the ECHL again? Neither of those sounds like great ideas for his development, and frankly, Ungar should be prioritized over two goalies above 30.

Still, if the focus is on winning this season and making sure you have enough depth to overcome injuries, then yes, sending Pickard to the Condors successfully is the play.

Keep Pickard on the roster

Only 6.4% of people chose the option of keeping the three-headed monster going. You have to think that the recent issues, where Kasperi Kapanen got injured, and Leon Draisaitl had to take a leave of absence, are what really influenced so few people choosing this option.

With him up, that takes up both a roster space and $1M of cap space, meaning the team could not recall a forward and had to run 11 forwards. For a guy who has only dressed once since Jarry came back, that doesn’t seem like smart roster management.

Sure, Pickard is noted to be very popular in the room, but being a personality hire can only go so far if it is going to cost the team potential points. If Kapanen and Draisaitl were in the lineup, then I don’t think many people would be too concerned, but it showed that the risk of keeping him up can be difficult to justify as outweighing the reward.

One other option to wanting to keep him is that Jarry has shown some injury issues as of late, including getting hurt in his third game. Therefore, the depth argument creeps up again. While people may say that if that comes to be, you have Ungar on fire, maybe give him a cup of coffee. But going from the ECHL to the NHL in less than a season could potentially not be the best development tool. So if there is an injury and you have no Pickard, you are relying on Tomkins, who has all of six NHL games to his resume.

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So what may appear to be a pretty easy decision when talking about a third-string goalie actually does become a bit more complicated when you delve further into it. Or, as with most things, we as fans are way overthinking things. Either or.

With the upcoming Olympic break, it seems more likely than not that the Oilers will ride with Pickard on the roster for the time being and revisit this when the roster freeze ends on February 22. You do have to think something will have to give at some point, but it remains to be seen what Bowman will decide to do.

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