The Edmonton Oilers swung a deal late Tuesday night to acquire Tampa Bay Lightning prospect Issac Howard, signing him to a three-year entry-level contract.
The deal is a swap of high-end prospects, as the Oilers have sent back prospect Sam O’Reilly.
Rumours had swirled around the draft and free agency about the Oilers trying to acquire Howard, who was named the 2025 Hobey Baker award winner after an electric season at Michigan State University in which he scored 26 goals and 52 points in 37 games.
The smoke was so intense that hockey insider Frank Seravalli said last week that there were “many people around the league that thought that the Oilers were getting Isaac Howard.” The reported deal, according to Seravalli, would have involved a first-round pick from the Oilers going back the other way.
Howard, 21, and the Lightning organization that drafted him 31st overall in the 2022 draft reached a crossroads in May when it came to trying to sign an entry-level contract.
“I just feel like with me and Tampa, I guess we didn’t see eye to eye the same way I thought we would,” Howard said on the April 11th episode of the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast, according to The Hockey News. “It wasn’t a situation where I was demanding to step right into the NHL, it wasn’t anything like that… It just didn’t necessarily work out and coming back to Michigan State is unreal.”
The left-shot, left-winger had then committed to return to Michigan State University in May after news broke around the time news broke he wouldn’t be signing with the Lightning.
The Oilers had clearly been after Howard for some time, and in the deal they part with a recent first-round draft pick of their own. O’Reilly, 19, was drafted by the Oilers 32nd overall in the 2024 draft where the team traded their 2025 first round pick to the Philadelphia Flyers to acquire the pick.
O’Reilly returned to the OHL’s London Knights this past season, scoring 28 goals and 71 points, and came in as Oilersnation’s second-ranked prospect last September.
Howard, meanwhile, just finished his third year of college hockey, his first of which was played at the University of Minnesota-Duluth in 2022-23, where he scored six goals and 17 points in 35 games. He transferred to Michigan State to become a Spartan in 2023-24, having a solid first season with eight goals and 36 points in 36 games, but saw an offensive explosion this past season.
Howard was listed by Daily Faceoff’s Steven Ellis as one of the top 10 NHL prospects who were standing out in the NCAA back in January, saying that “the sharpshooter looks as confident as ever with the puck, and he’s physically stronger, too.”
After a year in which the Oilers had one of the oldest rosters in the NHL, general manager Stan Bowman said earlier this summer one of the goals the team had was to get younger. And while Howard is two years older than O’Reilly is, the former is a player who can step into the Oilers lineup as soon as this fall, while the latter is someone who was likely still a few years away from being an everyday player for the team.
Now, the Oilers are likely to have two players on entry-level contracts in their opening-day lineup on entry-level contracts, as 21-year-old Matthew Savoie is expected to make the jump to the NHL next season.
