Will the Edmonton Oilers Be Last Year's Panthers or Canucks?

The Edmonton Oilers added injury to the insulting start of their 2023-24 season when they announced superstar Connor McDavid would be sidelined for the next one to two weeks with an upper-body injury.

You really couldn't think of a worse way to start the Oilers’ season than going 1-3-1, losing McDavid and generating only 13 goals-for in five games. It’s a stunning underachievement by a team many pundits picked as their Stanley Cup favorite this year, and it already has Edmonton on the clock and under considerable pressure to turn their season around, and soon.

If the Oilers don’t rebound soon, they could be this year’s 2022-23 Florida Panthers, needing a big-time hot streak to end their season as a playoff team. And their slow start nearly buried them. Consider: by the end of November last year, the Panthers were 10-9-4, and by New Year’s Day, they were 16-18-4. By the end of January, they had to go 19-10-2 just to squeak into a wild-card spot by season’s end. No small feat, to be sure.

That said, the Panthers’ similarity to Edmonton to start this season is a good-case scenario for the Oilers. The worst-case scenario could be their similarities to last season’s Vancouver Canucks. The Canucks began the year 0-5-2, and they were 4-9-3 by mid-November. 

They played better for a month after that but cratered completely in their subsequent 20 games, and by mid-February, they were an abominable 21-30-4. You can’t expect to crawl out of that type of hole. The NHL’s standings point system is designed to be a competitive obstacle for teams trying to atone for slow starts to the year, so it didn’t matter that Vancouver went 17-7-3 in their final 27 games. Their goose was already cooked, and they couldn’t play at a nearly perfect level to atone for their early struggles.

We’re not suggesting the Oilers are in must-win territory. But their next 13 games are going to be very difficult: they take on the Minnesota Wild, New York Rangers, Calgary Flames, Dallas Stars, Nashville Predators, Canucks, San Jose Sharks, Seattle Kraken (twice), New York Islanders, Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida and Carolina. Only the Sharks and possibly the Predators can be “gimme” games out of that group of opponents for Edmonton. Every other game has a significant chance of a loss for the Oilers. By the third week of November, the Oilers could be in a very troubling place in the standings.

In McDavid’s absence, Edmonton will lean on star Leon Draisaitl and their depth up front, but again, even with McDavid on the ice, the Oilers have managed to produce just 13 goals-for. 

If the Oilers are to rebound, they need more from winger Evander Kane (goalless thus far this year), the bottom two lines of forwards and defense corps (other than Evan Bouchard and Darnell Nurse), who’ve produced barely any offense through five games. Edmonton’s defense predictably hasn’t been solid – they’ve allowed four or more goals in three of their four losses this year – so the offense has to do much more than it’s done so far.

Any team that faces the catastrophe of losing its best player for a stretch must figure out how to adapt best and overcome adversity. So much was expected out of the gate for the Oilers, and now, suddenly, they’re up against the eight ball and in a position no team wants to be in. One game here or there may not matter in the macro picture for them, but make no mistake – they need to be a top-flite team for a good long while if they’re to outlast their opponents in the playoff picture.

There’s still plenty of time for Edmonton to right the ship, but with every disappointment in the immediate near future, their crater gets deeper, and the pressure mounts for them to go on long winning streaks just to get back to a playoff spot, let alone top spot in the Pacific Division. Time will tell if McDavid’s injury and the Oilers’ subpar play early on cast a shadow they couldn’t slip away from.