In a season full of pressure, things ramp up fast for Mike Babcock and the Edmonton Oilers, with one urgent matter of business hitting them right in the face as soon as the season starts.
The Oilers have had atrocious starts in the past eight seasons, two of which cost Edmonton head coaches Todd McLellan and Jay Woodcroft their jobs. Even under Kris Knoblauch, who took the Oilers to two straight Stanley Cup Final, the team got off to poor starts two straight years.
sked
It’s up to Babcock and this version of the McDavid/Draisaitl Oilers to get that ugly monkey off their back — and the rest of the NHL is watching.
On The FAN Hockey Show out of Sportsnet Toronto, co-hosts Matt Marchese and Mike Futa, the former asst. GM of the Los Angeles Kings, dug into Edmonton’s challenge on Monday, noting that the Oil face Vancouver twice and Seattle once in the team’s first three games, a soft start to the usual tough grind of the NHL season. Vancouver and Seattle failed to make the playoffs last year.
“Listen, if the Edmonton Oilers start anything but perfect or near perfect with the schedule that they have out of the chute, there’s gonna be some explaining to do,” said Marchese.
Futa said the Oilers again have a solid line-up, with goaltending still the question mark it’s always been.
“And for a team that’s notoriously not started well, but because of fatigue, they’ve been playing in the Stanley Cup final, they’re banged up for years, they got so many miles, they are rested now… You talk about critical starts to a season. That’d be one of them.”
On Edmonton’s early sked, Futa joked, “I think Connor might have did the schedule.”
My take
1. Futa and Marchese are right, the Oilers to have a relatively easy first three games, but every team in the NHL starts out with something to prove, self-belief, piss and vinegar. Those first three games won’t be so easy. Then the Oilers play Anaheim, San Jose, Los Angeles, Utah twice, Minnesota and Carolina, all teams expected to be in the playoff hunt. That’s not an easy first 10 games.
If the Oilers come out of it with six wins, that’ll be a massive positive.
2. While every team has something to prove at the start of the year, Edmonton may just have more to prove this year. There’s been no shortage of controversy around the Babcock hiring, as well as all kinds of talk about this being a one or two year window to get things right on McDavid’s current two-year contract. Leon Draisaitl himself made that second point.
If the Oilers can get some goaltending and puck luck, they should be OK. But, again, the early sked is far from a cake walk.
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