The best laid plans...
The Edmonton Oilers' regular season is finally over. The team finished third in the Pacific Division with a 46-28-5 record and 97 points, their worst showing since 2019-20. Their reward for snapping their five-year second-place streak? A fourth consecutive date with the Los Angeles Kings in the first round of the playoffs.
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Slight step back notwithstanding, 2024-25 has been a fairly typical season for the Oilers. Led by two 100-point superstars and a Hart Trophy candidate up front, the Oilers battled a slow start, shaky goaltending, and a lack of secondary scoring to clinch their sixth consecutive playoff appearance. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The Good
Leon Draisaitl
There's no better place to start than the best player in the NHL this season. Though hampered by injuries late in the season, Draisaitl finished third in the league in points with 106 and captured his first Rocket Richard Trophy with 52 goals in just 71 games.
Draisaitl was a force all season. It didn't matter who he played with, it didn't matter how the rest of the team was playing, and it didn't matter if McDavid was in the lineup. Already the league's best passer, he picked up his fourth-career 50-goal season and took a massive step forward defensively. Draisaitl is one of the two betting favorites to win his second career Hart Trophy, along with Winnipeg's Connor Hellebuyck.
Defensive Play
Some old dogs can learn new tricks. Long considered an offensive juggernaut with suspect defense, the Oilers flipped the script in 2024-25, allowing a ninth-best 2.29 expected goals against per 60 minutes at even strength. They matched that on the penalty kill, also finishing ninth at 4-on-5 with 6.88 xGA/60.
Much of that came from the team's forward depth, where Vasily Podkolzin and Connor Brown joined Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins as defensive stalwarts up front. Add in the always-reliable Mattias Ekholm and a resurgent Darnell Nurse, and you've got one of the league's best defensive cores.
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The Bad
Goaltending
There's a reason I focused on expected goals when discussing the defense. For all their shutdown acumen, the Oilers were let down too often by their goaltenders this season. They allowed 13.11 goals above expected at even strength, fourth-worst in the NHL behind Philadelphia, Nashville, and Chicago. No other playoff team allowed more than four goals above expected.
Both members of Edmonton's goaltending battery are to blame. Calvin Pickard allowed 9.1 goals above expected, while Stuart Skinner's 1.5 masks the 4.2 he's allowed at even strength. The Oilers are built so they don't need elite goaltending, but they needed better.
Offseason Moves
The Oilers were busy over the offseason, bringing in Jeff Skinner, Viktor Arvidsson, Vasily Podkolzin, Ty Emberson, and prospect Matt Savoie at the expense of Dylan Holloway, Philip Broberg, Warren Foegele, Ryan McLeod, and Cody Ceci. Those moves couldn't look much worse now.
Every forward the Oilers jettisoned last summer responded with career years, as Holloway and Broberg broke out on the playoff-bound St. Louis Blues, and Warren Foegele fit in perfectly in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Skinner and Arvidsson struggled mightily and performed at or near their career lows, while Savoie played just four games in the NHL.
While the Emberson-for-Ceci swap worked out, that was more addition by subtraction as Ceci floundered in San Jose and Dallas. Even Vasily Podkolzin, who was a revelation as a tenacious two-way grinder, scored just 8 goals and 24 points while playing most of the season next to the league's leading goal scorer. The Oilers' lack of secondary scoring has been a thorn in their side all season—it's not hard to see why.
It was far from a perfect season in Edmonton. But they're in the playoffs, and they're still led by the best one-two punch in the league. They've got a tougher road ahead than they have in the past, but they've handled adversity all season long.
The warm-up is over. The real season begins now.
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