Connor McDavid<\/a>\u2019s 12th National Hockey League season, is simple: What have you done to change your course?<\/p>\nHow far are you willing\/able to depart from what you\u2019ve done before, while still maintaining a team that won three playoff rounds in a row in the springs of 2024 and 2025?<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the bad news: It\u2019s an impossible question to answer, because that is just not how a hockey team operates internally.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can’t tackle the Finals (in September) because you’re not in the Finals. You can’t tackle the Stanley Cup because you’re not even there,\u201d explained Oilers winger Zach Hyman. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to play 84 games (first). So, we\u2019ve got to tackle Game 1. That’s the mindset.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the past, we’ve got caught looking too far ahead, and you can’t do that,\u201d Hyman continued. \u201cYou have to establish yourself first and foremost as a great regular-season team. We have to win the division. Like, we haven’t done that since (1987), so that’s a goal, right? And that even that’s too forward looking \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
So what, exactly, has to change? Glad you asked:<\/p>\n
Defensive game needs to be better<\/p>\n
After a decade of trading chances in the tradition of \u201cOilers hockey,\u201d it\u2019s beyond time that Edmonton puts on its big boy pants defensively. There has simply been too many dangles at the offensive blue-line, too many backward passes off the half-wall that go the other way, too many odd-man rushes against, too many Evan Bouchard pizzas.<\/p>\n
Edmonton\u2019s game has been good enough to win multiple series against some excellent Western Conference teams. But when the Florida Panthers brought their aggressive, pinch-down game to town, it outlasted Edmonton. The Oilers hung in there, but when they needed production at the end of the two series\u2019, it just wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re going to allow goals, they just have to require a greater level of work and commitment from the opponent. Will Mike Babcock make the Oilers a harder, more difficult team to score on? That\u2019s the goal \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m not the guy,\u201d Babcock said. \u201cThe players are in charge of this. I’m going to try to help them, and that’s my job here, totally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Need results from depth players<\/p>\n
Going back to the Matt Hendricks years (2014-17), there have been depth issues here. Not necessarily \u201cthey can\u2019t play\u201d issues, but issues surrounding their roles and their usage.<\/p>\n
Too much penalty-killing time being eaten up by top-six forwards; too much ice time overall for the big boys; not enough roles to allow all 12 forwards to feel like they have a hand in a winning team. The third- and fourth-liners wanted to help. Instead, they became The Help.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need way more depth, and if we’re going to have success at playoff time, we need more and more depth,\u201d Babcock said Monday. \u201cThat means we have to find players from within, and grow them. The other thing is, you\u2019ve got to be patient enough not to just to jam the same guys out on the ice all the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to let everyone play, but sometimes there’s a fine line there. Because they expect you to win every night too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goaltending needs to deliver<\/p>\n
No matter how tight your system, or responsible your puck play, eventually the other team is going to earn some scoring chances. At that moment, you need a save.<\/p>\n
Not every time \u2014 remember, the other team is trying too. But once in a while the goalie has to cover up a mistake and steal a goal from the opposition, and the bigger the game the more vital this becomes.<\/p>\n
Frederik Andersen opens the season in the injury list. Tristan Jarry is a big, fat question mark. He can win you games all season long, but what is his higher level, and does he get to it when the games truly matter?<\/p>\n
And Devon Levi looks pretty good. But his next NHL game will be his 40th \u2014 he defines a guy who might be able to do it, but hasn\u2019t done it yet.<\/p>\n
The goaltending is still a question mark in Edmonton. If the environment in front of those goalies doesn\u2019t improve, however, they won\u2019t be a question mark at all.<\/p>\n
We know what will happen, because we\u2019ve watched it here for years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014 They\u2019ve tried everything in Edmonton. Heck, they\u2019ve accomplished nearly everything too. There’s just the one, big…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":914175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":["post-914174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-edmonton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914174","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=914174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/914175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=914174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=914174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=914174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"32](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790693291_306_32-Thoughts-podcast-Elliotte-Friedman-Kyle-Bukauskas-640x360.jpg\")
32 Thoughts: The Podcast<\/p>\n