For the first time in years, the IIHF World Championship opened with Edmonton Oilers players on the ice.
It's been a while since any Edmonton players have competed at the World Championship. They haven't been available the last few years because the Oilers were still alive in the Stanley Cup Playoffs when the annual May event got underway. This year is different. The Oilers were gone by April 30, swept out in six by Anaheim, and five of their players made the trip to Switzerland as a result.
Canada features defencemen Evan Bouchard and Darnell Nurse, Sweden has Mattias Ekholm, and two younger Oilers fill out the other bracket. Josh Samanski with Germany and Isaac Howard with the United States.
The veterans are off to a decent start. In Canada's opening win over Sweden, Nurse picked up two assists, Bouchard logged a game-high 23:21 minutes, and Ekholm scored to pull Sweden level and was named his team's player of the game. Bouchard got on the scoresheet the following day as Canada shut out Italy.
Bouchard was left off Canada's roster for both the 4 Nations Face-Off and the 2026 Winter Olympics, and this is his first time representing Canada at the senior level. A strong two weeks in Switzerland won't change the narrative on its own, but it's a start.
However, Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Zach Hyman made the trip. Draisaitl was not named to the German roster, with Germany's hockey federation noting his health was prioritized in roster decisions. After two straight runs to the Stanley Cup Final followed by a grueling regular season in which the team never really found its footing, that's not a surprise. Some players simply need the summer.
As for whether the Worlds doubles as a scouting opportunity for Bowman; probably, to some degree, though that's true of every GM with eyes on the ice in May. With roughly $15.5 million in projected cap space and a long list of pending UFAs, Bowman has real decisions to make this summer, and the tournament is a natural venue to watch players he may be considering. Finding a reliable starting goaltender before July 1 is one of the more pressing items on the list.
The bigger picture, though, is what those five Oilers in Switzerland represent. This is a franchise that had grown accustomed to playing meaningful hockey deep into June. Now they're watching the first round from home and sending players to a consolation tournament. It doesn't mean the window is closed. McDavid is still there, Draisaitl is still there, and the core is intact. But the margin for error this summer is about as thin as it gets.
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