The Edmonton Oilers are following up a trip to the Stanley Cup Final with a streak of mediocrity to open the 2024-25 NHL season.
Despite another off-season full of high expectations, October came and went with the club failing to surpass the .500 mark.
They opened November with a 4-2 win over the rival Calgary Flames to sit 6-5-1 with a winning record for the first time.
But followed up by getting skunked 3-0 by the Metropolitan Division-leading New Jersey Devils on Monday to fall right back to even-Steven.
Oh, sure. Flirting with .500 is infinitely better than the first few steps the Oilers stumbled out of the gates with, falling flat on their face at 0-3.
But for such a star-studded squad that came oh, so close to tasting victory from the Stanley Cup a little over four months ago, one would assume the Oilers would want nothing less than to kick down the door and crash their way into a new season.
Of course, desire doesn’t always line up with reality. And the reality facing the Oilers right now is stark. All they want to do is have another shot at being on the right side of the goal that determines the champion from the runner-up.
Spinning their tires
Yet, here they are. A middling gang unable to make its way onto the fast track to gaining ground in the standings, spinning their tires at 6-6-1.
The thing is, the Oilers are hardly alone in their journey. In fact, they’re finding themselves in bumper-to-bumper traffic here in their middle-of-the-road sort of season.
Plenty of other teams are right there with them after taking a wrong turn off the Expectations Express.
The Boston Bruins and Toronto Maple Leafs faced each other Tuesday looking to gain some ground on the .500 gridlock, while the injury-plagued Colorado Avalanche are in danger of getting left in the Central Division’s dust.
Out in the Pacific Division, the reigning champion Vancouver Canucks have also less than impressed on the way to winning half of their first 10 games.
While their are still so many miles to make up ahead of them, the Oilers can’t look in the rear view mirror without seeing just how far they have come.
If this season feels underwhelming right now, just remember back to a season ago, when at this same point in the proceedings (13 games into their 82-game regular-season schedule), Jay Woodcroft was making his exit in favour of new head coach Kris Knoblauch.
They turned things around, of course, and the rest is history, as they say. But they also say history tends to repeat itself for those who don’t learn from it. Not that Knoblauch will find himself on the chopping block anytime soon after posting a franchise-best .703 win percentage in his rookie season at the helm.
But he is sure getting to walk a mile in his predecessor’s shoes when it comes to falling short of expectations early on in the season.
Long road ahead
There is still a long, hard road ahead. And so far, it hasn’t gotten any tougher than the Winnipeg Jets, who blew away the Oilers off the starting line with a 6-0 shellacking to open the season.
While they lead the league at an incredible 11-1, the Oilers have the toughest test in their own division coming up, with the Pacific leading Vegas Golden Knights (8-3-1) at Rogers Place on Wednesday (6:30 p.m., Sportsnet).
The thing is, every single one of those eight wins all came at home, while the Golden Knights have yet to win on the road, at 0-3-1. The Oilers are also road warriors in their own right, having won twice as many away as they have going 2-4-1 in the friendly confines of Rogers Place.
The Golden Knights find themselves on the flipside of the lag the Oilers are caught up in, as do the New York Rangers, Carolina Hurricanes and — here’s where it gets interesting — reigning Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers, who lead the Atlantic Division at 9-3-1.
Instead of suffering any sort of championship hangover, they passed any maladies along to an Oilers team that took them to Game 7 of the finals.
The microcosm of the bigger problem can plainly be seen in the two teams’ top goal scorers from a season ago.
Panthers forward Sam Reinhart’s 57 goals put him second overall, four goals ahead of Edmonton’s Zach Hyman. But where Reinhart went on to sign for big money in the off-season and came into Monday tied for the league lead in both points (21) and goals (10), Hyman appears to be more of a one-hit wonder.
Through the Oilers’ first 13 games, he has all of two goals.
With captain Connor McDavid pulled over to the curb with an ankle injury, the Oilers can’t afford to have such a big moving part of their engine stalling out.
Not if they hope to correct course and avoid hitting the ditch completely.
In and out: Forward Drake Caggiula has been loaned back to Bakersfield of the American Hockey League, after getting called up Oct. 29 along with forward Noah Philp.
E-mail: [email protected]
On Twitter: @GerryModdejonge
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