It has not been the kind of start to the season that the Edmonton Oilers had envisioned, but it’s still quite a bit better than where the team was this time last year.
The Oilers are currently in fifth place in the Pacific Division with a 9-7-2 record and 20 points on the season. The Calgary Flames, Vancouver Canucks, LA Kings, and Vegas Golden Knights are ahead of Edmonton at the moment, though the spread from fifth place to first is just four points.
For a team that came within a win of the Stanley Cup last season, this is not where you would expect the Oilers to be nearly two months into the season. It’s not an awful position, but it’s far from ideal considering the high expectations the Oilers had.
Yet, even with that, this may as well be light-years of where last year’s Oilers team found themselves in mid-November.
#Oilers are not having the start they wanted to the season, but it’s still way better than last year…
Record on Nov. 18, 2023: 5-10-1, 11pts
Record on Nov. 18, 2024 (today): 9-7-2, 20pts
Nearly double the amount of points with just two more games played.
— Preston Hodgkinson (@NHLHodgkinson) November 18, 2024
Things were looking pretty bleak for the Oilers last November. The team was off to one of their worst starts in franchise history and had just fired head coach Jay Woodcroft. The only bright spot to that point was an exciting victory over the Calgary Flames in the 2023 Heritage Classic.
At the time, the Oilers were 17 points back of the division-leading Golden Knights and seven points behind the Arizona Coyotes for the last wild-card playoff spot. Little did everyone know that the team would rattle off a mid-season 16-game winning streak in a prelude to a deep run to the Stanley Cup Final.
There have been plenty of things wrong with this year’s iteration of the Oilers, but they have managed to put themselves in a much more favourable position than last year. A win against the Montreal Canadiens tonight would move them into third place in the Pacific Division, just two points back of the division lead.
Goaltending and scoring remain concerns for this team, but this year is far from over and the Oilers still have plenty of time to deliver on their high expectations.