Oilers' Walman needs to find a way to work himself back into lineup

Would love to be a fly on the wall as Edmonton Oilers GM Stan Bowman talks to head coach Mike Babcock about Jake Walman’s usage, with the $7 million D-man sitting out six of the last eight games.

General managers are clear that they don’t tell NHL coaches whom to play — it has always been that way — but hockey managers and coaches do talk all the time, and presumably Bowman would like to know Babcock’s reasoning for continually sitting Walman.

Damning part in all of this: with Walman not playing his $7m AAV is dead money on their tight cap ($1.045m in space), clearly not a good thing. It’s not like Walman, on the first year of his seven-year $49 million contract — the team’s fourth highest paid player is hurt and stashed on long-term injured reserve (LTIR) and the Oilers could potentially then use that money for another warm body.

Walman is being paid almost much as the Oilers second D pairing of Ryan Shea ($4 million cap hit) and Connor Murphy ($4.1 million) combined. They haven’t missed a game while Walman has been a scratch for six games.

It’s eminently clear Babcock, who has a team that keeps winning (14-3-3), likes left-shot, right-shot D pairings and he likes the tag-team of Shakir Mukhamadullin and Ty Emberson, especially the young Russian because of his size and reach through the first quarter of the season. He did try Mukhamadullin with the fellow lefty Walman, but went back to Emberson.

So where are we with Walman, who is coming off season lows of 11:46 (against New Jersey) and 12:18 (against Anaheim) before getting scratched, again? He has a no-trade through 2029-30, and even if he wanted a change of venue, he’s virtually unmoveable if Bowman was talking to his confreres at the recent GM’s meetings in Toronto — more for the term, than the dollars with the escalating salary cap.

Walman was an excellent for the Oilers in their run to the Cup Final in 2025. When he’s on his game, he’s mobile, can get the puck moving north, is Bouchard Lite with his shot, but isn’t a true defender, isn’t a true offensive force. He’s a tweener.

“Exactly,” said a long-time NHL pro scout.

“There are times when you watch Walman and there’s a shift where you go ‘wow,’’’ said the scout. “But that’s one shift.”

Walman is saying all the right things, about how he likes Babcock’s coaching, but he looks defeated right now, as he trudges to the ice for practices, an extra then, a sitter for the games. Babcock, who leans on his defenceman coach D.J. Smith, is right that he needs more from Walman, who has been outscored 10-3 when he’s on the ice in his 11 games. He doesn’t like the giveaways from his spot behind the bench, and later on video.

“I just stand there each night and I watch the guys and then my job is to make the decision to help the team win. It’s personal to the guy, not to me. It wouldn’t matter if you’re my son. Doesn’t work like that,” Babcock said a few weeks ago.

Walman is much better than this. He may get back into the lineup on Saturday against Toronto. Partly because he’d be playing in his hometown, and Emberson only played 11:14 against Philadelphia on Wednesday, significantly less than his d-partner Mukhamadullin.

Maybe Babcock puts Walman and the Russian back together. For sure, with a six-game road trip (Toronto and Philly back-to-back, Florida, Tampa, and Carolina and St. Louis back-to-back), Walman has to play somewhere, and more than a game or two.

Money aside, Babcock has to turn Walman into a mobile, role-playing defenceman, even if it’s in the third pair, playing against third and fourth lines. You can’t sit a $7 million player, the second highest-paid D after Bouchard ($10.5 million).

As an NHL source said “He has to get desperate to get in the lineup, to be honest.”

But, with Babcock locked into a first pair of Bouchard and Mattias Ekholm, and a second pair of Ryan Shea and Connor Murphy, Walman has played only 156 minutes in the Oilers first 20 games, as they approach the NHL’s quarter-pole.

Shea’s played a whopping 389 minutes and has become Babcock’s second-most used D after Bouchard (414 minutes). Ekholm is 380, so almost triple Walman, and the expectation was Walman would take some of the 36-year-old fellow lefty Swedes’ ice-time. Mukhamadullin has played 221 minutes.

When Walman does play, he doesn’t get on the second power play unit to get some extra time, Shea has taken over that role. Shea has taken on a bigger role this year with the Oilers than he had in Pittsburgh last year.

Bottom line on Walman: The player’s not happy, the GM, who signed him isn’t happy in terms of the cap.

The coach plays the players he thinks gives him the best chance to win.

Bowman had a fine piece of work, moving Darnell Nurse’s $9.25 million AAV with four years left to San Jose, without attaching a sweetener (prospect or draft pick), instead getting the former first-rounder Mukhamadullin. The Sharks might want him back.

But the Oilers haven’t had any long-term injuries on the back-end, so Walman can’t squeeze his way back. Bouchard, Shea and Murphy have played all 20 games. Ekholm, who got drilled into the glass by Carolina’s William Carrier three weeks ago, has played 17. Mukhamadullin 15, Emberson 16. Walman 11.

They may want to trade Walman because a $7 million defenceman can’t be a healthy scratch night after night — maybe for another centre. But he has that no trade clause for four more years. Maybe Walman gets upset enough he’s willing to waive the no-trade, but teams aren’t keen on picking up a guy with this season and six more, already 30, and not playing.

The reality is NHL teams can never have too many defenceman and it’s not like Bakersfield has a locked-and-loaded ready defenceman to come up and play to replace Walman. Yes, they like Damien Carfagna and Tomas Cibulka on the farm, but they haven’t played an NHL minute. Also the second you trade a 329-game NHL defenceman, you’re playing with fire, with injuries.

Bottom line: The situation with Walman isn’t hot-button because the Oilers keep winning, only three regulation losses. That’s good for the coach, good for the GM. But, it’s incumbent on Babcock to figure out how to play and how to use his $7 million player.