from Mark Spector of Sportsnet,

If the Edmonton Oilers were a cake, or some fantastic dessert that the recipe book promises will wow your guests, then Ken Holland is the chef, pacing the kitchen floor and glancing through the oven window.

Holland’s ingredients have long since been purchased, measured and folded into the bowl — give or take a one-year deal for Connor Brown, or the icing sugar that is a Brandon Sutter Professional Try Out.

Now he waits, confident in his ability to think on his feet with the right PTO, or a deadline deal come late February that can bring in the defenceman (or goalie?) he’ll need at that point on the season.

"We're going to start with the seven defencemen who finished last year. The goalies are set," Holland said over the phone on Friday afternoon. "Up front, we signed Brandon Sutter this summer. We’ll go to camp, see what they can do, watch the waiver wire …"

Look, if his team resembled a mud pie, you could criticize Holland for a summer that featured only the one major move in Brown — who will see $3.225 million of his $4 million earnings come off the 2024-25 cap in the form of bonus overages. It’s not perfect — especially if Jack Campbell doesn’t find his game this season — but it’s a pretty good roster Holland has built here in Edmonton.

And honestly, just keeping the younger players that a team has to keep has exhausted much of Holland’s ability to make material change in Edmonton, even if he wanted to.

“This is my fifth year here in Edmonton. The cap has gone up $2 million in five years,” he said. “We brought in (Zach) Hyman. We brought in (Evander) Kane. We brought in (Mattias) Ekholm — players who have had a high impact on the team. But it starts to add up.”

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