EDMONTON — Expectations are still sky-high for the Edmonton Oilers heading into the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs.<\/p>\n
Anything short of winning the Stanley Cup would be a disappointment for a team that believes its championship window is still open despite having an inconsistent regular season. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe expectation is the same as always,\u201d Oilers captain Connor McDavid<\/a>\u00a0said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a great belief in here. Playoff hockey is unique. It\u2019s a skill to win in the playoffs, and we feel pretty good about having that skill, having been there and winning a lot of playoff games. That being said, it\u2019s exciting for everybody and we\u2019ve got to be ready to roll.\u201d<\/p>\n Edmonton will kick off its postseason on Monday, when it hosts the Anaheim Ducks in Game 1 of the Western Conference First Round at Rogers Place (10 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, KCOP-13, ESPN2, Victory+).<\/p>\n Regardless of how the Oilers got to the postseason starting line, they are still a playoff savvy group, one that has advanced to the Stanley Cup Final in each of the past two seasons.<\/p>\n The one thing missing is a championship, though, with Edmonton losing to the Florida Panthers in seven games in the 2024 Final and in six games in 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cThe expectation is to win the Stanley Cup,\u201d Oilers forward Zach Hyman<\/a> said. \u201cIf we lose in the first round or we lose in the Final we\u2019re going to be (upset).\u201d<\/p>\n To the Oilers’ credit, they haven’t done much losing lately in the playoffs.<\/p>\n Since 2021-22, Edmonton has played 75 postseason games, going 43-32 with three appearances in the Western Conference Final and two trips to the Cup Final. Only the Panthers have more playoff experience in that stretch (78).<\/p>\n McDavid, forwards Leon Draisaitl<\/a> and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins<\/a>, and defenseman Evan Bouchard<\/a>\u00a0have played in all 75 postseason games over those four seasons. Defenseman Darnell Nurse<\/a> has played in 73 of the games, and forward Zach Hyman<\/a>\u00a0has played in 68.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you talk about playoff experience and it being a factor, when you don\u2019t have it, you don\u2019t really think it\u2019s that important, and when you do have it, you realize it is important,\u201d Hyman said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re a young kid and you come in and you play your first playoff game, you\u2019re taken aback because everything is different. It\u2019s not the same as the regular season. Players play differently. Everything is different, everything is faster, every play matters. It\u2019s a different game, so when you have that experience, you know what it\u2019s like.<\/p>\n \u201cYou see teams like Florida that had 98 points (in the regular season) last year and they turned it on in the playoffs and they were the best team by quite a lot in the East. It\u2019s a different game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON — Expectations are still sky-high for the Edmonton Oilers heading into the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Anything…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":{"0":"post-613978","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-edmonton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}