The Oilers and Zach Aston-Reece

The Edmonton Oilers dipped into the college free agent pool with a lot of success last spring. The team procured Drake Caggiula and Matt Benning, both current NHLers, and Nick Ellis, who has taken over as the starting goalie in Bakersfield. Patrick Russell, who has struggled to adapt to the pro game, was also brought on board by the club.

The Oilers’ 2015 draft class is unique because the biggest prize, Connor McDavid, is already in the NHL. Defenders Ethan Bear and Caleb Jones will both be in the AHL next season, but other than that Edmonton doesn’t have much coming from this draft. Ziyat Paigin is still in the KHL and it’s unknown whether he’ll come over this summer. Forward wise, the Oilers have nothing besides McDavid to show form 2015.

Zach Aston-Reese could provide cover for the 2015 draft and turn pro with the Oilers this offseason. The 22 year old forward from Northeastern University saw his season come to an end in a heartbreaking way on Saturday night, and now he’s free to sign with any NHL club. The Edmonton Oilers, according to reports, are one of many teams looking at the forward.

This was by far Aston-Reese’s best season at Northeastern, playing in 38 games and registering 31-32-63. The left-shot forward was extremely valuable to a Huskies team that lost a number of key contributors from last year’s Hockey East Championship squad, and to me Reese was the most valuable forward in Hockey East.

One of the most impressive thing about Aston-Reese is that he posted offense in numerous different ways. Yes, he’s a very talented and skilled player that could score the pretty goals, but he also scored a lot of ‘dirty’ goals and was a demon in front of the net for NU.

Aston-Reese really fits the Chiarelli/McLellan template well. He’s a hard player to play against as he brings it physically and plays hard down low. He’s also a pest on the ice and was able to aggravate his opponents with relative ease this past season. In a few viewings of Aston-Reese this year, I noticed he was able to frustrate the opponent much in the way Brad Marchand of the Boston Bruins does.

In fact, Aston-Reese’s game reminded me a lot of Marchand before his emergence as one of the NHL’s best goal scorers.

He’s not overly big, only six feet and 204 pounds, but as mentioned above Aston-Reese plays a more physical game than one might expect from an NCAA forward who posts the offense that he does. In addition to his career high 63 points this season, ZAR posted a career high in penalty minutes as well with 72.

While he wouldn’t come to Edmonton and be a superstar, Zach Aston-Reese looks to be a legit NHL player who is up for grabs. The Oilers don’t have many forward prospects in the pipeline and ZAR could get a real good opportunity if he signed with Edmonton. In fact, I think legit NHL time right out of the gate is a possibility with this player. The Oilers have a need and he looks ready to my eye.

Aston-Reese would be a real nice fit with the Oilers and would represent a valuable acquisition by the hockey club. Edmonton needs to hope that its recent success with college free agents, its track record of giving these guys opportunity, and former ZAR roommate Matt Benning can persuade the forward to sign with the Oil.