Connor McDavid gave the Pacific Division its unofficial name last season when he called the playoff race a “pillow fight.”
The Edmonton Oilers were second in the Pacific with 77 points when McDavid made the comment in March. Anaheim led the division with 80, and the Oilers were 18th in the NHL standings while still holding a playoff spot. Ten Eastern Conference teams already had more points than the Pacific-leading Ducks.
The Oilers received plenty of help from the teams around them. They spent most of the season trying to find their game, went through enough periods where fans were almost done being Oilers fans, and still entered the playoffs without having to chase from the outside.
Edmonton enters this season with multiple injuries. Matt Savoie will miss training camp after suffering an injury during offseason training. Frederik Andersen is out as well, leaving Tristan Jarry and Devon Levi to battle it out for the backup role until he returns. Mattias Janmark and Alec Regula will also miss camp while recovering from medical procedures.
Mike Babcock is installing his system with a roster already missing four players. There will be new line combinations, a new approach behind the bench and another attempt to get Edmonton playing consistently during the regular season, a point they never reached last season.
The Oilers were coming off consecutive trips to the Stanley Cup Final and spent much of the season acting as if getting there was just something that happens to them. McDavid said as much when he talked about the division. Edmonton wasn't playing well enough, and nobody around them was doing enough to push them to.
Edmonton finished first in the Pacific before losing to the Ducks in the first round, ending a season where the Oilers never found the game that had carried them through the previous two playoff runs.
That should make another weak Pacific a dangerous thing for Edmonton.
The Oilers know they can survive a bad week. They proved last season they can survive several of them. A division without anyone separating from the pack gives a veteran team plenty of opportunities to convince itself that there is still time to sort things out.
There usually is time with McDavid and Leon Draisaitl on the roster.
Babcock was hired to get something else out of the regular season. Draisaitl said this summer that the Oilers never established a pattern over 82 games last year and never really figured out what they were as a group. That problem followed them into the postseason.
Savoie was expected to have a place in the top six after finishing last season with 19 points over his final 24 regular-season games. His absence gives Isaac Howard, Kasperi Kapanen, Colton Dach and other forwards trying to establish themselves in Babcock's lineup a better chance at getting there.
Andersen's injury puts Jarry and Levi in net. Edmonton signed Andersen in July after he played 35 games for Carolina last season, and now that he's gone for a while, Levi and Jarry have a golden opportunity to prove they should be the ones to stick around.
Last season, Edmonton lost games and looked around to find most of the division doing the exact same thing. McDavid's pillow-fight comment came after all six Pacific teams playing that Saturday lostn and Anaheim led the division with a point total that wouldn't have held a playoff spot in the East.
That kind of race allows mistakes to pile up without changing much in the standings.
Edmonton already knows where that can lead. The Oilers made the playoffs last year, even getting home ice in the first round, but they still went into April without establishing the game they wanted, and Anaheim ended their season before the second round.
Another pillow fight would give them another chance to get away with it during the regular season.
Babcock's job is to make sure they don't need to.
