It is a stinging indictment on how the Edmonton Oilers have played so far that three wins in a six game span represents the best stretch of their season.

That’s a pretty low mid-season bar for a team that believes its Stanley Cup window is still open.

But it is also a beacon of hope, the first real evidence that the Oilers might claw their way out of another early season funk and re-establish themselves as contenders.

They took three of four points out of Tampa Bay and Florida at the end of a seven-game road trip. They pounded Seattle 4-0. They gave the hottest team in hockey everything it could handle in a 1-0 loss to Minnesota. And they rolled over Seattle again, this time 9-4 Thursday night at Rogers Place.

For a team that hasn’t won more than two games in a row all season, going 3-2-1 when you include an 8-3 loss to Dallas, is as close as it gets to a hot streak. They’ve looked good more often than they’ve looked bad in those six games, which is more than they could say for any other six game stretch this year.

So, yes, they’re trending up, ever so slightly.

“I feel like we’re playing better,” said Oilers captain Connor McDavid, after his three-goal, one assist night paved the way for Edmonton’s latest rout of Seattle. “It’s nice to score some goals and feel good about ourselves. It’s been a little bit of a grind here finding wins. It’s nice to put a good one together.”

The signs are there. They are still a long way from where they need to be, but some pieces seem to be falling into place.

The black hole that their defence and goaltending had become this year is starting to see some light. They came a last-minute goal away from shutting out Tampa Bay. They blanked Seattle. They held Minnesota to one goal. That looks like the opening few planks of a possible foundation.

“We’re getting there,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “This isn’t quite our team yet, we still have things to work on. Seattle wasn’t at their best, they had a long break (five days between games) and we took advantage of that. But I’m starting to see a lot more things I like and it starts with our compete and attention to detail in the defensive zone.

“If you don’t do both of those things you can still win once in a while, catch a team off guard and sometimes win a shootout game, but if you can’t consistently play good defensive hockey you won’t have much success. I saw it in Tampa and Florida on the last road trip we were a lot more dialled in.”

During the most worrisome moments of their troubling start, we told ourselves to reserve judgement — wait and see what the team would look like when they have all their top players healthy and when they were well-rested and at home.

So far, so good.

Offensively, a nine-goal outburst will do wonders for their confidence. The tighter defence is speaking for itself. The power play, which had been invisible for weeks, looked like its old self in scoring four times Thursday. Good signs all.

So, are the Oilers back, or did the stars align in just the right order to create a perfect mirage?

The pessimists and nit pickers are well-armed in this discussion. As Knoblauch said, the Kraken were a pretty easy mark. They can’t score, which makes them a tailor-made opponent for Edmonton, and their goaltending was terrible in the 9-4 loss. And as good as the Oilers looked against Minnesota, the end result was still a shutout loss on home ice. And Dallas spanked them 8-3. And Tampa and Florida were shadows of themselves, decimated by injuries.

When you look at it that way, it might be reason to curb your enthusiasm until we see more evidence. Or you can hop on board with the Oilers, and everyone else who dearly wants to believe they are on the way back — throw the asterisks out the window and build on the good vibrations. All you can do is beat the teams they put in front of you and they’re doing that.

“Minus that one game (against Dallas), it feels like we’re coming, we’re getting there,” said Evan Bouchard. “I think we’re all on the same page. We’re playing a lot faster. Things are clicking, guys are coming together.”

There is a long way to go and, despite these last six games, the Oilers are still in a very uncomfortable position. They have 54 games left and need to go 29-17-8 to finish with 95 points, the bare minimum to clinch the last wildcard spot.

In other words, that 3-2-1 pace that has everyone feeling so optimistic isn’t going to be good enough.

So, this had better be the start of that turnaround, otherwise it might be too late when it actually happens.

E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com

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