With the trade deadline just days away and the Edmonton Oilers sitting 26th in the league in goals against, GM Stan Bowman sat down with reporters Monday and delivered a clear message. Adding new faces won’t fix what’s broken if the current group doesn’t change how they play.
Speaking at Rogers Place, Bowman addressed the team’s defensive issues, pointing the finger at everyone in the squad.
“We haven’t played well defensively as a team,” Bowman said. “I think there’s a number of factors, all of them contributing. It’s goaltending, defence and forwards.”
The GM’s diagnosis? The Oilers have swung too far in one direction. After struggling to score early in the season, they’ve overcorrected and are now playing a high-risk high-reward style that’s leaving them exposed at the back end.
“The biggest challenge for our group is we don’t put ourselves in a great spot often in games and we score a ton of goals,” Bowman explained. “If you think back to the early part of our season we weren’t scoring a lot. So we’ve swung the pendulum probably too far one way where we’re pushing to try to make things happen and in the process of doing that, we put ourselves in really bad spots.”
It’s about mentality, not the roster
If fans were hoping Bowman would promise a big splash at the deadline to solve all the team’s problems, it seems we might be disappointed. Throughout Monday’s presser, the GM kept hammering home the same point. This team already has the talent and they just need to commit to playing the right way.
“Until we learn as a team to be smarter about the way we approach the games, we’re going to see a lot of highs and lows,” Bowman said. “Some nights we’re scoring a lot of goals and other nights we’re giving up a ton of chances and putting our defence and our goalie in bad spots.”
That’s not to say the Oilers won’t be active before Friday’s 3:00 p.m. ET deadline. Bowman acknowledged that adding a player or two would be nice, but he was careful to manage expectations about what those additions could realistically accomplish.
“It’d be nice to bring a player or two in, I think, but also the biggest way we’re going to be a better team is we got a lot of good players here and they’re talented,” Bowman said. “That commitment from our group to playing smarter hockey, winning hockey, I think is going to probably pay the biggest dividends.”
So don’t expect a magic bullet.
“It’s not like it’s going to completely change the fortunes of our team,” he added. “We’ve got a lot of really good players here.”
Paul Coffey’s return was proposed by Kris Knoblauch
One move the Oilers have already made is bringing Hall of Famer Paul Coffey back onto the coaching staff. Bowman said the idea came up during the February break when it became clear something needed to change.
“We weren’t playing well heading into the break and I think it was obvious that we had to do something to change our group,” Bowman explained. “Kris brought it up to me and said, ‘Do you have any thoughts?’”
Coffey’s been around the team all year in an ambassadorial role. but now he’ll be back behind the bench working with the players day-to-day. Bowman thinks that combination of familiarity and fresh perspective could be valuable.
“When you’re not behind the bench you sometimes have a different view on things,” Bowman said. “That combination I think is good.”
The goaltending question
One of the more interesting exchanges came when Bowman was asked point-blank if the Oilers are shopping for a goalie. His answer? Kind of, but also not really.
“I think our goaltending hasn’t played great, but at the same time, I think a bigger problem is we put our goalies in a really tough spot,” Bowman said.
It’s the same theme again. The system is broken, not necessarily the pieces. Bowman pointed out that when the team played better defensively from mid-December to mid-January, the goaltending looked solid. When the team started cheating for offence and giving up grade-A chances, the goalies struggled.
“We put our goalies in some really tough spots and I don’t think that’s a winning formula no matter who you have in net,” he said.
That said, Bowman didn’t completely let the goaltenders off the hook.
“I’d like to see our goalies find some more consistency to their game,” he admitted. “I think the better way to do that is not only for them to find their game, but for us to put them in situations where they’re more likely to find it.”
How does a Cup finalist forget how to win?
One reporter asked the question on every fan’s mind. How can a team that’s been to back-to-back Cup Finals and has been elite for years suddenly look this lost defensively 60 games into the season?
Bowman’s answer was pretty straightforward that they’re just not winning consistently enough.
“I don’t think it’s a lack of knowledge,” he said. “You can’t get to the Stanley Cup final two years in a row if you don’t play a winning brand. We definitely can do it. And we haven’t done it frequently enough.”
He chalked it up to the natural ups and downs of an NHL season noting that even the best teams have rough patches. But he also acknowledged that the players need to be better about managing the risk-reward balance.
“We got some incredibly talented players and they have the best intentions,” Bowman said. “They want to help the team win and they’re not out there trying to do bad things. They’re trying to score, but sometimes the risk-reward trade-off, it’s in the wrong order and you end up where we’ve been lately.”
Bowman even mentioned that other GMs around the league have joked about wishing they had Edmonton’s “problem” of scoring too much.
“I’ve been talking to a lot of GMs lately and they kind of laugh like ‘we wish we had that problem. We can’t score to save our life,’” Bowman said. “So, we’re kind of in the other end where we’re scoring a lot, but we’re giving up too much.”
Bowman refused to single out Darnell Nurse
When asked specifically about Darnell Nurse’s play, a hot topic among fans lately, Bowman refused to throw the veteran defenceman under the bus.
“I’m not going to single Darnell out,” Bowman said. “I think he’s part of a group of probably seven or eight guys that all are very good players and they’ve played well at stretches this year.”
The message is that it is a team-wide issue and not one player’s fault.
“I would say he’s in a long list of guys that are very important players to our team and we believe in them, but we need all of them to dial in the commitment to playing maybe a simpler game,” he said. “And I think it’s top to bottom. It’s not just Darnell.”
Stan Bowman had all the praise for Evan Bouchard
If there’s one bright spot in all this, it’s Evan Bouchard’s continued development. Bouchard leads all NHL defencemen in scoring and has become a legitimate two-way force.
Bowman couldn’t say enough good things about Bouchard’s growth this season.
“I’m continued to be, not surprised I guess, impressed with Evan’s progression to be an elite all-around defenceman,” Bowman said.
The GM pointed out that most casual fans still think of Bouchard as just a power play specialist but that’s outdated.
“Most people who don’t watch him that closely if you were to ask them ‘what do you think of Evan Bouchard?’ ‘Oh, he’s good power play offensive defenceman’ and he definitely is that,” Bowman said. “But he’s shown the ability this year to be great at a lot of things, not just offensive things.”
Bouchard’s playing big minutes against top competition, contributing on the penalty kill and still putting up points at an elite rate.
“You can’t play 25 minutes without being a guy that can play against everybody,” Bowman noted. “He probably doesn’t get enough recognition for his all-around game because he started out mostly as an offensive defenceman. But I think in the process of becoming an all-around player, he hasn’t lost the offence. He’s just gained the other parts of his game.”
What to expect at the deadline
Bowman confirmed the Oilers are looking at both forwards and defencemen with a preference for a right-shot D-man to balance out the left-heavy blueline.
“We have more lefts than rights, so yeah, I think in this simplistic way, yes,” Bowman said when asked if he’d target a righty. But he also cautioned against being too rigid about it. “Sometimes if a better player is a left shot that can play the right side, then… but yes, ideally you’d like to have three lefts, three rights in your pairs.”
It seems he was apparently talking about Connor Murphy who the Oilers have just acquired from the Chicago Blackhawks in exchange for a 2028 second-round pick.
Bowman didn’t have any updates on potential extensions for pending free agents Kasperi Kapanen and Jack Roslovic, saying the team’s focus right now is on the next few months not the summer.
“I think right now our focus is more so on the here and now and leading into the deadline,” he said.
Win-now mode continues
Asked if having Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl creates extra pressure to make moves, Bowman said the team’s always been in win-now mode so nothing’s really changed.
“We’re always looking to add, so I don’t know if there’s any added pressure,” he said. “We want to win. Like that hasn’t changed.”
But once again, he circled back to his main point. The biggest improvements need to come from the guys already in the room.
“There’s a lot of ways to improve as a team,” Bowman said. “Part of it is new players and part of it is our existing players to dial it in a little bit better.”
He finished by making it crystal clear where the organization’s priorities lie. “We’re not looking to, you know, the team in a couple years,” Bowman said. “We’re looking to try to win right now. And that’s the way it was when the season began. Hasn’t changed at all. And we’re going to keep pushing.”
With the Oilers’ record at 29–24–8 and sitting third in the Pacific Division, Bowman made it clear what the problems are and that they aren’t looking for quick fixes.
Whether the current group can flip that switch and start playing the “smarter, simpler hockey” Bowman keeps talking about remains to be seen. But one thing’s for sure, the clock is ticking and the margin for error is getting smaller by the game.
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