{"id":532688,"date":"2026-03-31T11:33:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T11:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/532688\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T11:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T11:33:12","slug":"josh-samanski-is-blossoming-into-the-oilers-shutdown-centre-of-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/532688\/","title":{"rendered":"Josh Samanski is blossoming into the Oilers shutdown centre of the future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Josh Samanski<\/a> made his regular season NHL debut for the Edmonton Oilers<\/a> on January 26th, 2026. In such a short period of time, he has seemingly solidified his spot as a regular on the Oilers roster, carving out a role in the team’s bottom-six.<\/p>\n

Just last year the 24 year old was breaking out in the German DEL, leading all U-23 players leaguewide in scoring. He signed a two-year entry-level contract<\/a> in the summer and has been able to work his way up the ranks through their American Hockey League affiliate the Bakersfield Condors to a permanent role with the Oilers.<\/p>\n

On his current line, Samanski is logging over 10 minutes a game and playing a defensive shutdown role with trade deadline acquisition Jason Dickinson<\/a> on the third line. It is a hard spot for a rookie to be thrust into but it seems as though Samanski is being primed and developed to take over that role in the future.<\/p>\n

Samanski has fit well with the Oilers<\/p>\n

Samanski has been billed as a two-way forward for a long time, using his large frame and hockey sense to be an impactful 200-foot player. He has also been one of the Oilers’ best players defensively since he joined the team.<\/p>\n

Using evolving-hockey.com<\/a>, he ranks first on the Oilers in corsi against per 60 minutes and second in expected goals against per 60 minutes all at 5-on-5. Of course, it should be noted that it is a small sample size but the early returns and given his body of work, it sparks a lot of optimism about his career trajectory. <\/p>\n

He has also shown the ability to play on the wing and down the middle, allowing him to be used in a variety of ways within the Oilers bottom-six. On top of his defensive ability, one of the Oilers’ most productive lines using underlying statistics was Samanski playing alongside Jack Roslovic <\/a>and Matt Savoie<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Samanski is the future<\/p>\n

This off-season, the newly acquired rental Dickinson will become an unrestricted free agent at 31 years old. Although he likely does not command his current caphit of $4.25 million per season and the Oilers could do well to re-sign him.<\/p>\n

However, if general manager Stan Bowman opts to allocate his salary cap in a different way, he may choose to not re-sign him. This would make Samanski the best bet to take over as the defensive shutdown centre with the team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Samanski made his regular season NHL debut for the Edmonton Oilers on January 26th, 2026. In such…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5125],"tags":[198,146,5300,5,4,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-532688","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton-oilers","8":"tag-edmonton","9":"tag-edmonton-oilers","10":"tag-edmontonoilers","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-oilers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116323575736990999","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}