If you think that the Edmonton Oilers are going to win the Stanley Cup without Evander Kane, or a player with similar Double F attributes, I suspect you’re engaged in wishful thinking. The fact is that the Edmonton Oilers have come close to winning the Stanley Cup two times this century, taking it to Game 7 in both the 2006 and 2024 playoffs, and a key ingredient of the success of both those teams was have a Double F player or two.
What are Double F players: Functional and Ferocious?
You’ve likely heard about NHL team’s needing “functional toughness.” well, Double F players are one step greater than that level when it comes to physical play.
The Oilers aren’t short of functional toughness this year. They have been in the past but not any longer.
To succeed, NHL teams need functional toughness, namley a good number of tough, aggressive players who can be counted on to both make smart plays with the puck and also stand up to intimidation tactics, while dishing out punishment when that’s necessary.
The Decade of Darkness Edmonton Oilers had the odd tough player, but hardly any of them were good enough to play a key role as a Top 6 forward, a third-line centre, or a Top 4 d-man. Ladi Smid and Erik Cole were closest the Oilers came to developing or acquiring such players in that sad period. Most often Edmonton’s toughness came from bottom end players such as Jean-Francois Jacques, Luke Gazdic, Steve MacIntyre, Zack Stortini, Ben Eager, Theo Peckham, and Jim Vandermeer.
The Oilers brought in two such bottom end players to add to overall team toughness this year. First came big Josh Brown, one of the NHL’s most physical d-men last year with 8.9 hits per game for Arizona, and, second, huge Vasily Podkolzin, who was one of the top hitting forwards in the NHL in his 19 games with the Canucks. But it’s a stretch to see either Brown or Podkolzin playing on a top defensive pairing or forward line. More likely they will battle to hold a roster spot.
But a number of tough Oilers are also highly functional players, starting with Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Zach Hyman, Viktor Arvidsson and Mattias Ekholm at the top of the line-up, but also players like Adam Henrique, Mattias Janmark, Corey Perry, and, possibly maybe newcomer Ty Emberson, who is being counted on to grab a key role as Darnell Nurse’s partner.
No NHL team advances in the playoffs without this kind of functional toughness. But to go all the way and win the Cup, a special kind of player is needed, the Double F, a player who can function well on a top line or pairing and in ferocious fashion.
In 2006, the Oilers had a number of such players, Raffi Torres, Ethan Moreau, Jason Smith and perhaps the NHL’s most intimidating player that season, Chris Pronger. Every Oiler on the ice played like they were two inches taller and 20-pounds heavier when they lined up next to the nasty and highly-skilled Pronger.
In 2024, Edmonton had one such Double F player in Evander Kane. Kane’s physical play was critical in Edmonton beating Los Angeles and Vancouver. He pounded Drew Doughty and Mikey Anderson with wicked hits and stood up to Vancouver intimidator Nikita Zadarov, all the while playing some of the best two-way hockey of any Oilers forward. If Kane hadn’t been so banged up, I suspect Edmonton would have beat Florida in the final.
But now Kane is out, his battered core headed for full bodywork surgery which will put him out indefinitely. Will Kane be good to go and his usual Double F self by the 2025 playoffs? One can hope.
The 2023-24 had more functional toughness than any Oilers team in the McDavid Era, save for the 2016-17 Oilers, a team that lost in the second round of the playoffs in no small part due to highly suspect officiating that favoured the constant fouling of the Anaheim Ducks. That Edmonton squad had Patrick Maroon, Adam Larsson and Milan Lucic (in his last good NHL season) all in key roles, with bottom end back-up coming from hard players like Zack Kassian, a young Darnell Nurse and Eric Gryba.
The 2024 Oilers had Nurse, Henrique, Dylan Holloway, Vincent Desharnais and Sam Carrick to go along with Kane.
Without Kane — or a similar player — in a top role this year, I can’t see Edmonton winning the Cup. That’s all the more the case because the Oilers lost the best candidate to replace Kane when fast and aggressive Dylan Holloway signed in St. Louis. Holloway is not a ferocious player — I doubt he’ll ever have that rare aspect — but he had the guts and ability to blast top opposing players with big hits, as well as the skill to stick on a top line.
Edmonton’s only other Double F candidate this year is Nurse. Nurse has played the Double F game for long stretches in the past, but it’s taken a physical toll on him. He’s out injured right now and was a shadow of himself in the playoffs last year, possibly due to injury. It takes a unique mentality to play the Double F game, but it’s all the more astonishing to do so when you’re banged up, which makes Kane’s 2024 playoff performance even more impressive.
Is it too much to hope that Kane will be back in the Double F role this playoff season? And that Nurse will regain that same kind of game? And that Emberson, Josh Brown and Podkolzin come through in signifiant roles, greatly adding to Edmonton’s functional toughness?
If all of those things come together, if Kane and Nurse are both playoff beasts and the team has other tough players throughout the line-up, I can’t see this Oilers team, as skilled as it already is, losing in the playoffs. But that is a lot of ifs.
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