The Edmonton Oilers' schedule has finally eased up. The brutal stretch of back-to-backs and grinding road trips is mostly behind them. But if you look at what's ahead, something feels off. They're playing a lot of one-game road trips sandwiched between home games. It's not necessarily bad, but it's hard not to feel like the Oilers drew the short end of the stick here.
Think about what a typical one-game road trip looks like. You fly out, play the game, fly home. Sounds simple enough, right? But you're disrupting routines, dealing with travel fatigue, sleeping in a hotel for one night, then immediately coming back. You don't get the benefit of settling into a rhythm on the road like you would during a longer trip where you play three or four games and stay out East or West for a week.
There's no real opportunity to build momentum away from home. You can't string together road wins and feel like you're conquering opposing buildings. It's just constant back-and-forth, one game at a time, never really getting comfortable anywhere.
From a player perspective, this has to be exhausting in a different way than a long road trip. On a six-game trip, you pack heavy, you settle in, you accept that you're going to be away from home for a while. There's a mental adjustment that happens, and once you make it, you're locked in. With these one-off trips, you're constantly in transition. You're home, then you're not, then you're home again. It messes with your routine, your sleep schedule, your ability to find any kind of consistency.
Veterans have dealt with this before. They know how to manage it, how to prepare mentally for the constant bouncing around. But for rookies? This is a whole different challenge. Guys like Matt Savoie and Isaac Howard are still figuring out what it takes to compete at this level night after night. Now add in the disruption of constant travel, never settling into a routine, always packing and unpacking. It's one more thing to manage when they're already trying to establish themselves.
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The advantage, if you want to call it that, is that you're sleeping in your own bed more often. You're not away from family for extended periods. You're eating at home, training in familiar facilities, maintaining some semblance of normalcy between games. For players with young kids or personal situations that benefit from being home, this schedule probably feels like a blessing.
But hockey-wise? It's tough to build anything. The Oilers haven't won three straight games yet this season. Part of that is performance, sure, but part of it might be this choppy schedule that never lets them get into a real groove. You win at home, fly out for one game, come back. It's hard to create sustained momentum when you're constantly resetting.
Compare that to teams that get extended road trips followed by long homestands. Those teams can build something. They can go 4-2 on a road trip and come home feeling good about themselves. Or they can struggle on the road but know they have seven home games coming up to right the ship. There's continuity, a chance to string results together and feel like you're trending in a direction.
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The Oilers don't really get that. They get home game, road game, home game, road game. It's piecemeal. You're never really home, but you're never really on the road either. You're just constantly in between.
The NHL schedule is never perfect, and every team deals with quirks. But this particular setup feels like it puts the Oilers at a disadvantage compared to teams with more traditional scheduling patterns. It's harder to build chemistry, harder to establish routines, harder to create the kind of sustained success that comes from stringing together wins.
For a team still trying to figure out its identity, still integrating rookies into the lineup, still searching for consistency, this schedule doesn't help. The Oilers need to find a way to win regardless, but it's fair to acknowledge that the constant back-and-forth makes everything just a little bit harder.
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For weeks, the conversation around the <a href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/edmonton-oilers#google_vignette">Oilers</a>' bottom six has been dominated by what's missing. What Trent Frederic isn't providing. What Andrew Mangiapane won't do. The frustration over players who haven't embraced the roles the team needs them to fill.
The games are easier on paper now—fewer playoff contenders, more struggling teams. But the travel pattern adds a layer of difficulty that might not show up in the standings but absolutely affects performance. Players feel it. Coaching staff has to manage it. And the Oilers need to figure out how to thrive in spite of it.
It's not an excuse. Every team deals with scheduling challenges. But it's also not nothing.
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