The major junior cycle of winning and losing is usually four years, where you take your real shot at the big prize, making a ton of trades, giving away draft picks and prospects like they’re chocolate bars, then you hit rock bottom, start a massive rebuild and hope the playoffs come again.
Meet your 2024-25 Edmonton Oil Kings.
They were in the 2022 Memorial Cup as WHL champions, with a strong roster that won 50 of 68 league games, a roster that included current NHLers Dylan Guenther (Utah), Jake Neighbours (St. Louis) and Kaiden Guhle (Montreal) along with goalie Sebastian Cossa, arguably Detroit’s best prospect — all first-round draft picks. Then, they crashed, winning 10 games the next season and were the worst team in the CHL. Last season? Twenty-seven wins, but still outside the playoffs. This season?
With four games left in their schedule, the Oil Kings are back in the playoffs against … TBD. It’s up in the air, but after a spirited Rogers Place 3-2 loss to the Calgary Hitmen Wednesday morning, against one of the three best teams in the WHL, the Oil Kings are far from a pushover. They battled hard in their annual Hockey Hooky game before a raft of school kids with an announced crowd of 17,846, with Adam Jecho and Rylen Roersma scoring PP goals in the setback.
They’re in it to win it, but realistically, maybe they only get one playoff round on the road back. After the Hitmen loss in the Oil Kings’ Game 65, they’re in fifth spot in the Eastern Conference with 35 wins and 74 points, in a mosh pit with Brandon, Saskatoon and Prince Albert. If the playoffs started today, with the No. 1 seed vs. the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference, 2 vs 7, 3 vs 6 and 4 vs 5, the Oil Kings would be playing Lethbridge (84 points) in Round 1.
They have a winning seasonal record against the Hurricanes.
The Oil Kings, with the fourth-most goals in the Eastern Conference, probably won’t fall any farther back than No. 7 seed, so likely won’t draw the red-hot Hitmen, with just one win against them in regular season, or the Medicine Hat Tigers, who have the prohibitive 2026 first-overall NHL draft pick, world junior forward Gavin McKenna, in a mad fight for No. 1 seed in the East.
But, again, they’re just happy to be back in the playoffs.
“Everything’s on track, the way we thought things would go,” said Oil Kings’ GM Kirt Hill, who is shepherding the rebuild after the WHL title high in 2022 and choosing not to take any wild swings at the WHL trade deadline in January. He didn’t add to a roster led by Florida’s second-round pick Gracyn Sawchyn, who has 75 points in 51 games, and two Czech world junior forwards and NHL drafts Jecho, drafted by the Blues, and Miroslav Holinka, taken by the Leafs, on a team with eight WHL rookies, including Jarome Iginla’s son Joe and Sawchyn’s brother Lukas.
“It’s a long road back but if you’ve got a ring, it makes it easier. That’s the price of winning in junior hockey. Moose Jaw’s going through it this season. Going through rebuilds isn’t easy. You learn a lot as I have, but like I said, you never want to look back,” said Hill.
“At the end of the day, our group has jelled this season. The depth of our team has allowed us to stay in the hunt with the amount of injuries we’ve had.
“Now we’re waiting for the playoffs. And there’s lots of parity with the three top teams but they’re the ones that loaded up at the deadline,” he said, referring to Calgary, Medicine Hat and Lethbridge, all about 10 points better than the rest in the Eastern Conference. “We’ve been on that side of the fence before, where you’re trying to win. A couple of those teams will have broken hearts.
“We’ve had three or four good drafts in a row and that gives you a better shot at getting back there quicker,” said Hill, who might also get the first overall pick later this year because they have Moose Jaw’s pick in the draft lottery.
Moose Jaw went all in last year, trading for Oilers farmhand Matthew Savoie, among others, to complement NHL first-round picks Brayden Yager, now with Lethbridge and part of Jets’ organization, and Denton Mateychuk, drafted by Columbus, and got to the Memorial Cup dance.
But they have the worst record in the WHL today.
Which team the Oil Kings will play in the playoffs in two weeks is a total guess.
“The stressful thing is the travel with our staff. They have to book travel to six or seven different places right now because they don’t know who we’ll be playing,” said Hill.
“Our division within the Eastern Conference, there’s good parity. It’s been like a playoff game pretty much every night, leading into the playoffs.”
“We’ve had three 16-year-olds (Iginla, Noa Ta’Amu and Josh Lee) with us all year and we have a 15-year-old forward Kayden Stroeder, who’s been impressive lately. We also have four 17-year-old WHL rookies,” said Hill, including Lukas Sawchyn, who has 61 points and is a possible mid-round NHL draft pick in June. “Pretty good rookie class.”
In the end, it comes down to goaltending, though.
“We’re going to need consistency in net,” said Hill.
Alex Worthington, 20, has been a revelation with a .902 save percentage in 40 games. He was with the Oil Kings briefly in 2021-22, before taking a year off. Then he bounced back in the ACAC for Briercrest College in 2023-24, and after training camp last fall, they decided to keep him and let veteran Kolby Hay go.
And rookie Ethan Simcoe, 19, who started the year in the BCJHL with Coquitlam and played well against Calgary Wednesday morning, has been very good in a backup role, playing 20 games at 12-5-1 with a .914 save percentage.
“Ethan wasn’t even on our radar but we added him when the NCAA rules changed,” allowing players to play major junior and be eligible for an NCAA school later if they so desire, said Hill.