The Edmonton Oilers have a long list of pending free agents this summer. But among them, I would argue that Connor Murphy should be at the top of their priority list to re‑sign. 

It has seemed that a second-pairing right defenceman has been on Edmonton’s wish list essentially every off-season and trade deadline since Adam Larsson’s departure in 2021. Evan Bouchard is locked in as Edmonton’s top-pairing right defenceman, but the right side on the second pair has been a gaping hole for quite some time. At least, that was the case until the 2026 trade deadline, during which the Oilers finally dealt for a second-pairing RHD in Murphy.

With Murphy set to become a UFA this summer, here’s why I believe the Oilers should make a strong effort to re-sign and keep him.

*All stats via EvolvingHockey, Natural Stat Trick, HockeyStats, PuckIQ and AllThreeZones

Reason #1: Murphy’s stellar defensive results

The ultimate goal of defending in hockey is to suppress goals and scoring chances as much as possible. Few players have done that more consistently than Connor Murphy. 

One metric I often look to for evaluating defensive play at even strength is EvolvingHockey’s EVD (Even-Strength Defence) model, which attempts to isolate a player’s impact on suppressing even-strength quality scoring chances by factoring in quality of teammates, quality of competition, zone starts, and more. It is by no means a perfect measure, but I find it quite valuable when used and interpreted correctly.

Here is a timeline of Murphy’s EVD per 60 minutes of play, and where it has ranked each season among all defencemen in terms of percentiles:

In the past 10 years, Murphy’s defensive impact has ranked above the 63rd percentile in nine of them. It has exceeded the 80th percentile on numerous occasions as well, and in fact, this past season in 2025-26, Murphy ranked fourth among all defencemen with an EVD of 9.4.

To put that into perspective, in the entirety of the analytics era (post-2007), only 11 other defencemen have had an EVD rating higher than 9.4 in a single season, names like Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Niklas Hjalmarsson in their primes.

And it is not just EvolvingHockey’s model where Murphy ranks well. Per the EVD model on hockeystats.com, Murphy’s even-strength defensive impact ranked at an even better third place among all defencemen this past season. Very, very impressive.

Now, both these EVD models are primarily built around expected goals against. The thought process behind this is to separate a skater’s results from the goaltending behind them, because models built around actual goals against would end up unfairly........

© Oilers Nation