The Edmonton Oilers wake up Sunday morning, second in the Pacific Division at 26-13-3, 55 points, just four back of Vegas, two ahead of L.A. the latter of whom the Oilers meet next on Monday.
As the second half of the NHL regular season dawns Edmonton is right in the fight for top spot. And when your club looks “that close” to being a winner, it gives your General Manager impetus to make the roster even more dangerous. To use every tool available to them to get his team over the top.
That and more in this edition of…
9 Things
9. Darnell Nurse played his 679th career game Saturday. He is now fourteenth on the Oilers all-time list, passing Todd Marchant. Barring injury, Nurse will pass Craig MacTavish’s 701 for tenth spot before the season is done.
8. Nice to see the Erie Otters honoring Connor McDavid Friday night, his number 97 jersey retired with Connor present. I was particularly taken by his wise words of advice for the Otters players in the room prior to game time.
7. My favorite thing about hockey is speed. It is the fastest of all major professional sports. So far in 2024-25, Nathan MacKinnon has the most 20+ MPH skating bursts in the league with 307. Connor McDavid is second with 227.
6. Hard not to notice the season William Nicholl is enjoying in the OHL. He is 12-22-34 in 36 games and is +19 for the London Knights. Same for Shane LaChance who is 7-12-19 in 18 games at Boston University. Context: Those are Oilers Seventh and Sixth Round selections, respectively.
5. Matthew Savoie of the Bakersfield Condors has been named to the AHL All Star Game. Going int action Saturday the St. Albert product is 9-16-25 in 30 games and is +8. The Edmonton Oilers have a lineup that will be very hard to crack between now and June. Failing that, Savoie is tracking to be a cap-friendly contract in Edmonton for 2025-26.
4. Corey Perry scored an important goal on Saturday, his seventh. A lot of people want to count the 39-year-old out. I even wondered how much gas the guy has left. But from the hash marks in, Perry is still a dangerous NHL attacker. At the outset of the season if you told me Corey Perry would score fifteen goals, I would have taken that gleefully. But Perry is also what the corporate hiring world calls an “A” Player. He makes others around him better. Underestimate him at your peril.
3. Neither the Black Hawks nor the Pittsburgh games were Rembrandts. But the loss to the Penguins bugged me a whole lot more than the close shave in Chicago. The Oilers simply did not appear ready against a hungrier Pens club. And while I liked the push back over the final forty, they never should have been in that position to begin with. But by the time they got to the Black Hawks Edmonton was playing its fifth game in eight days. Four of the five were on the road across three time zones. An excuse? No. But a factor? Of course it was.
2. I like Kris Knoblauch’s version of accountability. A non-veteran play by veteran Connor Brown on the 3-1 by Ryan Donato Saturday evening resulted in a long sit on the bench for Brown. But with the game on the line late in the third, Brown was back on the ice to help protect the lead. Remember, this is the same coach that sat Leon Draisaitl earlier this year. I do not always agree with Knoblauch’s coaching decisions in the moment. But he frequently proves me wrong. Successful coaches have a knack for getting the best out of their players. Kris appears to have “it.”
1.The story of the week for the Edmonton Oilers was Evander Kane. Everyone was surprised to hear that he had undergone successful knee surgery, interrupting his rehabilitation from a major abdominal procedure. It seemingly tossed a wrench into the works of what was already a trade deadline cap situation injected with intrigue. This is not a bottom-of-the-roster player on a league-minimum contract. It is a unique impact forward who comes with a significant price tag. So, the development is attention-grabbing and consequential.
But while I agree this raises important questions about Kane’s ability to help the Oilers on the ice like he did when he first arrived here, there seems little question on the face of it that it can still help the franchise at the deadline. Provided Kane does not play a regular season game, the development means Stan Bowman may have $5m in salary to play with. That is difference-maker money.
The cap play here for the Oilers seems blindingly obvious and, yes…Vegas-esque. Now, I am not a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory kind of guy who dreams up fanciful X-Files scenarios. I very much doubt that this is the plan Bowman drew up on the back of a napkin on July 24. But when presented with the circumstances available to you…
And look: I totally agree it is unlikely to get peak Evander Kane after all that time away from the game. He will have very little opportunity to “play his way back into game shape” and be a thirty-goal guy again. Look how long it took Connor Brown to return to a facsimile of his former self.
But Kane is also a terrific athlete with a unique, difference-making ability that can be almost as much of a game changer on the third line as the first: To be an imposing, proven, punishing pain in the ass. To gain that in April without giving up an asset?
Yes, please.
Newly on Bluesky @kurtleavins.bsky.social. On Twitter @KurtLeavins, Threads @kleavins, Instagram at LeavinsOnHockey, and even on Mastodon at [email protected]. This article is not AI generated.
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