Morning Skate: Leon Draisaitl’s extension sets up a bright future, if Oilers management stays smart

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Lace ’em up. Time for the Morning Skate.

The Edmonton Oilers put a pretty bow on top of their presumably last offseason move before the start of the 2017-18 season. Leon Draisaitl signed an eight-year, $68 million extension on Wednesday, calming fans’ fears after the restricted free agent took a month and a half to come to terms with the Oilers.

It’s a domino that will likely cause Boston’s David Pastrnak to fall in line soon in his own contract negotiations, as the market has clearly been set for young stars’ second contracts by Draisaitl, Connor McDavid, and Ryan Johansen. For the Oilers, however, it means they’ll have both McDavid and Draisaitl under contract for a total of $21 million starting in 2018-19, a hefty sum for seven years.

It’s the same set up the Blackhawks have with Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, and one that’s paid dividends considering Chicago’s recent success. The Blackhawks’ success, however, has also come with value secondary and tertiary contracts for their depth players. In Edmonton’s case, they’ll have $50.9 million locked up until 2021 between eight players: McDavid, Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Milan Lucic, Kris Russell, Andrej Sekera, Adam Larsson, and Oscar Klefbom. With next year’s salary cap rising to $75 million, the Oilers have 68 percent of their cap invested in eight players.

While those eight players are mostly a solid core, with McDavid making everyone better by association, the Oilers will have to be smarter with their upcoming signings if they want to take advantage of their window. Pieces can come and go, but the Oilers may be blocking themselves out of some of their upcoming restricted free agents like Ryan Strome and Darnell Nurse if they aren’t more frugal with their second-tier players.

In the meantime, the pair of McDavid and Draisaitl will be wrecking the NHL for seasons to come. Welcome to the new age.

CBS Radio stations in Las Vegas had a bad few hours on Wednesday. An email from CBS Radio Las Vegas was obtained by KLAS-TV’s Ron Futrell. In it, it is stated that employees of the radio stations could make “no further mentions” of the Vegas Golden Knights.

The reason? Because their competition, Lotus Communications, won the radio rights to Golden Knights games.

Hours after the email leaked, CBS Radio’s Vegas division reversed their decision, saying it was “an error in judgment.” A very wise decision, so that the NHL’s newest team can get all the coverage they can in their first year.

It’s only by happenstance that Draisaitl has made No. 7 on our list the day after he got his big pay day. On Wednesday, Jack Eichel was No. 8 to some controversy from Buffalo fans!

As always, you can follow along with our entire rankings right here as we count down the league’s top 25 players under the age of 25.

Matt Cullen has decided to continue playing in the NHL for his 20th season. He’s headed back to the Minnesota Wild on a one-year, $1 million deal after winning two Stanley Cups with the Penguins.