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With Burke declining to match, the Edmonton Oilers have signed Dustin Penner to a five year, $21.25 million dollar offer. The 24 year old scored 29 goals and 45 points last year, in his sophomore season. The Ducks will receive compensation in the form of the Oiler's 1st, 2nd, and 3rd round draft picks.

Not sure what to think of this deal .he is young and played well last season alot like lupal did his last season with the ducks, but penner game is alot more advance then Jofferys was. hopefully a good signing.

Edmonton's success will be key to this deal.

If the Oilers finish towards the bottom of the league, that pick will end up haunting them, considering that the draft is quite deep next summer.

I'm thinking we can pull off a near playoff miss so that the pick slides out of the Top 10, provided we don't go through another devastating injury stretch. Hopefully the deal won't come back to haunt us in any meaningful way, as I'm sure it shouldn't if our main guys can just stay healthy.

Looking at the deal in some depth, on the plus side, this brings a consistent goal-scoring threat to an often stagnant offense, a guy who ranked near the top of the league last year in production per minute when it comes to scoring. He's projected as a power forward and could become the physical presence we need. Plus there seems to be a lack of top-flight talent in next year's draft, and we already have a deep enough prospect pool, plus Anaheim's pick from the Pronger deal, that the missing 1st rounder shouldn't hurt us. Simply put, we're not losing much in this deal.

On the negative side, he played some of the easiest ES minutes in the league last year and on a team with no real strong two-way line, he will need to start playing some harder minutes which will expose any potential defensive weaknesses he might have. The contract is overpayment, the picks given up could (emphasis on could) be very high, and Penner could be a huge bust just like the last young promising Anaheim player we picked up.

High risk, high reward. Personally, I could go either way on it, but I'll just drink the kool-aid and give the move a thumbs up

Basically the way I see Lowe's future in edmonton is based on Penner's success. He gave up alot to get this guy and if things don't work out Kevin Lowe WILL lose his job.