Edmonton just put Alex Formenton in an Oilers sweater for $850,000, and a loud slice of the hockey world is acting like a judge in London, Ontario never picked up a gavel.
Found not guilty. All five of them. Ontario Superior Court Justice Maria Carroccia ruled in July 2025 that the Crown did not prove the sexual assault case beyond a reasonable doubt and that the complainant’s evidence was not credible or reliable. The Crown did not appeal. The NHL cleared the players to sign. Hockey Canada reinstated Formenton outright in August while the other four took staggered suspensions. Then Stan Bowman did what a general manager with a shrinking championship window does: he signed the cheapest available skater who can still fly.
I am not reopening a hotel-room case a court already closed. I am convicting the people who treat a completed acquittal like a draft suggestion and the franchise that needed this signature because its forward depth has been gutted after two straight Stanley Cup Finals.
The Court Finished. The Noise Did Not
Formenton skated with the captains group the day the deal dropped and did not duck the microphones. “I just want to say I’m very grateful to the Katz family, Stan Bowman, Jeff Jackson, and Mike Babcock for granting me this opportunity,” he said. “I’m very excited to be an Oiler and look forward to trying to make the most out of this opportunity.”
He went further: “I’ve been open and honest of my actions in it and that has given me an opportunity today.” That is the posture of a player who knows the league already labeled the 2018 conduct as falling “woefully short of the standards and values that the League and its Member Clubs expect and demand,” then still opened the door on October 15, 2025. You can despise that standard. You do not get a private appellate court in the comments section after the actual one ruled.
Stan Bowman did not pretend this was casual. “I’ve had a chance to have multiple conversations with Alex and go over lots of things,” the Oilers GM said. “We’ve reached the decision we think this is the right move to bring Alex in and help our group.” Multiple conversations. Not a flier. Not a PTO buried in the AHL. A one-year, league-minimum bet on a 6-foot-2, 195-pound left shot who turns 27 this month.
Ottawa already walked. Steve Staios said a year earlier that both sides wanted a fresh start, then the Senators cut Formenton from their free-agent list in May and made him unrestricted. Carter Hart landed in Vegas and rode a two-year deal into a Cup Final run. Dillon Dubé signed in St. Louis. Formenton is the third of the five back on an NHL contract. The pattern is obvious. Teams that need bodies are taking the court at its word.
McDavid’s Clock Does Not Care About Your Outrage
Here is the hockey truth nobody wants on the chyron. The Oilers are in Cup-or-bust mode with a head coach hired to finish the job and a Connor McDavid extension that put a two-year fuse on the whole operation. Forward depth has eroded since those back-to-back Finals. Early camp injuries to Matt Savoie and Mattias Janmark thinned the reliable options even more. Josh Samanski, Colton Dach, and Isaac Howard have a combined 139 NHL games among them. Formenton, for all the rust, has 109 big-league games on his own ledger, including a 79-game season in 2021-22 when he scored 18 goals and ranked second among Senators forwards with 150:27 on the penalty kill.
He has not played an NHL shift since April 2022. Three seasons in Switzerland with HC Ambrì-Piotta produced 52 points in 88 games, then a leave in 2024-25, then a return. The translation back to North American pace is the real risk, not the verdict. Speed was always the calling card. Mike Babcock wants forwards who hunt on the forecheck. A bottom-six checker who can kill penalties for the league minimum is exactly the kind of low-upside, low-cost patch a contender grabs when the window is slamming.
I have watched enough deadline desperation and September stopgaps to recognize the difference between a morality referendum and a roster admission. This is the latter. Edmonton is telling you, with an $850,000 cap hit, that the supporting cast around McDavid and Leon Draisaitl is thin enough that a four-year NHL exile still clears the bar.
League Minimum Is the Tell
If Formenton cannot hang, he gets scratched or farmed and the experiment costs nothing. If the legs still beat defensemen wide, Bowman just bought cheap minutes for a team that cannot afford another soft underbelly in May. Formenton himself framed the personal side without theatrics: “Over the last eight years, just like any other human, I’ve been going through life lessons and maturing. There are lots of lessons to take from it moving forward.”
The lessons for the rest of the league are simpler. An acquittal is an acquittal. A reinstatement is a reinstatement. A contender with injuries and a superstar on a short fuse will take the skater who can still move. The Oilers did not sign a cause. They signed depth at the floor of the salary scale because the alternative was watching another season of inexperienced forwards learn the hard way in October.
McDavid’s two-year timeline is the loudest fact in the building. Bowman just answered it with the cheapest available winger the league would let him touch. The court already spoke. The ice will finish the argument.
