{"id":252121,"date":"2025-10-31T01:18:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T01:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/252121\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T01:18:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T01:18:06","slug":"the-october-oilers-are-back-can-they-snap-out-of-it-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/252121\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018October Oilers\u2019 are back. Can they snap out of it again?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For better or worse, the Edmonton Oilers<\/a> have cultivated a reputation over the last few seasons as being extremely slow starters.<\/p>\n

Back in 2022-23, the Oilers went 10-10-0 in their first 20 games before finishing with a 50-23-9 record and 109 points. Their 3-9-1 start the following year cost head coach Jay Woodcroft his job; even in 2024-25, under new bench boss Kris Knoblauch, they lost five of their first seven and remained below .500 a week into November. <\/p>\n

And through 11 games this year, the Oilers \u2014 the reigning Western Conference champions in 2024 and 2025, remember \u2014 sit outside the playoff picture with a 5-4-2 record and a dead-even goal differential, having lost to such teams as the Calgary Flames<\/a>, New York Islanders<\/a>, Detroit Red Wings<\/a>, and Seattle Kraken<\/a> in the opening weeks of the 2025-26 regular season.<\/p>\n

Even with Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, and Evan Bouchard in tow, the Oilers have been unable to avoid falling into this trap on a yearly basis. If anything, those three have shared various levels of culpability for the team\u2019s poor performances out of the gate. But each year, without exception, they\u2019ve snapped out of it.<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s game against the red-hot Utah Mammoth<\/a> could serve as the ideal litmus test going forward. The Oilers had so many things working against them \u2014 they were also debuting their subpar alternate jerseys<\/a> \u2014 and it didn\u2019t help when Utah took a 2-0 lead into the first intermission. But they scored half a dozen of their own after that en route to a 6-3 win, and it wasn\u2019t just their stars driving the bus.<\/p>\n

Last year, McDavid and Draisaitl were the only two Oilers with more than 70 points, and they both hit 100. Bouchard was the only other player on the team to score 50, and he finished with 67. This is an extremely top-heavy group, which has allowed the Florida Panthers<\/a> to beat them with their depth in each of the last two Stanley Cup Finals. And the Oilers remain without Zach Hyman<\/a> as he continues to recover from off-season wrist surgery.<\/p>\n

But on Tuesday, it wasn\u2019t just the Oilers\u2019 offensive stars who began to show more signs of life. Ike Howard, Ty Emberson, and Mattias Ekholm all contributed to a five-goal second period for the home side at Rogers Place, while Stuart Skinner rebounded from an iffy opening frame to stop 13 of 14 the rest of the way for his third victory of the year.<\/p>\n

McDavid and Bouchard also helped out plenty, which hasn\u2019t been as much of a foregone conclusion lately as in years\u2019 past. McDavid entered Tuesday\u2019s contest with just one goal in 10 games; Bouchard had just four points and far more defensive miscues than usual over that span. Those two combined for five points against Utah, with Draisaitl \u2014 who has been one of the few bright spots early on \u2014 adding a goal and an assist of his own.<\/p>\n

The Oilers spent the summer retooling the forward group that helped them win three playoff rounds for the second consecutive year. Faced with salary cap constraints, as well as a desire to reshape an aging and inconsistent cohort of secondary scorers, they cut ties with Corey Perry, Evander Kane, Connor Brown, Jeff Skinner, and Viktor Arvidsson, who combined for 24 goals in the 2025 post-season.<\/p>\n

In an ideal world, the Oilers would use Dylan Holloway, Ryan McLeod and Philip Broberg as reinforcements, but for a variety of reasons, those three players are no longer available to them. Instead, their new-look supporting cast includes a pair of rookies in Howard and Matt Savoie, as well as UFA signings Andrew Mangiapane and Jack Roslovic, 2025 trade deadline add Trent Frederic, and Czech League veteran David Tomasek.<\/p>\n

The early returns from this group haven\u2019t been great. Knoblauch clearly has little patience for Howard and Savoie, with both players struggling to generate at 5-on-5 despite being heavily sheltered. Roslovic has been just OK on Draisaitl\u2019s wing. Mangiapane scored in each of his first two games as an Oiler but has just seven shots on goal in nine games since. Frederic has only one point to go along with poor shot and chance metrics. Tomasek is barely playing.<\/p>\n

Without much else to rely on in high-leverage situations, Knoblauch has defaulted back to the long-standing crutch leaned on by many Oilers head coaches before him: a McDrai line. Nos. 29 and 97 have spent more time with each other than apart this season, averaging nearly 10 minutes of ice time per game together at 5-on-5 alone. On most teams, the No. 1 defenseman plays far more than anybody else; through October, Bouchard is leading McDavid on a per-game basis by 11 seconds.<\/p>\n

When McDavid signed his new two-year contract with the Oilers earlier this month, he simultaneously extended their competitive runway by a couple seasons while also upping the pressure on them to win right now. But if his new deal created any extra urgency around the team to take that next step forward, it certainly isn\u2019t showing on the ice. The Oilers\u2019 early results have been concerningly pedestrian in every category, marking a considerable departure from their two-way dominance in past seasons. <\/p>\n

The Oilers badly need to prove that this October, like the three before it, has been a fluke. They\u2019re not that far out of a playoff spot, although they\u2019d need to do a lot to have a chance at ending their 38-year division title drought. Their November schedule is far from a walk in the park, including dates against Dallas, Colorado, Carolina, Washington, and both Florida teams.<\/p>\n

If any team has proven it can overcome this kind of adversity, it\u2019s the Oilers. But their top players are getting older \u2014 Draisaitl turned 30 last week, Ekholm is 35, and McDavid will turn 29 in January \u2014 so it truly is now or never. After the truly unparalleled run of fair fortune the Oilers had at the draft in the early 2010s, it\u2019ll go down as one of the all-time failures if they\u2019re unable to complete even one successful championship run with this group.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

POST SPONSORED BY bet365<\/p>\n

Recently by Mike Gould<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For better or worse, the Edmonton Oilers have cultivated a reputation over the last few seasons as being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-252121","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}