Four key areas of improvement for Oilers' Stan Bowman in off-season

EDMONTON — It’s a fair debate, which job presents a more difficult task for a National Hockey League general manager:

Is it starting at the bottom, the way the next GM will be in Vancouver, charting a course that can take the Canucks from 32nd place all the way to the top?

Is it John Chayka’s new gig in Toronto, home of what Connor McDavid would call “an average team with high expectations” — and no leeway to get worse before the product gets more competitive?

Or is it the guy wearing Stan Bowman’s loafers, whose tenure will be considered an abject failure if he does not deliver a Stanley Cup in one of the next two seasons?

We’re not sure there is another market in the NHL where a GM could get his team to a Stanley Cup Final in 2027, lose, and have a market asking for his head. But that’s where Edmonton is at now, with the end of the Connor McDavid era in plain sight.

So it starts now for Bowman, with four key areas of improvement that need to be met in Edmonton this summer.

1: Improve the penalty kill and defensive play

There was some debate over whether the Oilers' paltry penalty kill was poorly coached or whether the coaches had the answers but not the players to execute them.

Either way, a 50 per cent PK in the playoffs, coupled with a 20th-ranked regular season, targets this as an area of major focus for Bowman.

Here is where re-signing UFA Connor Murphy can certainly be of help. He is exactly that kind of player, a defensive-minded, shot-blocking, physical guy who embodies the areas where the Oilers have to refocus next season.

Ditto for Jason Dickinson, although a concerning stat is that Dickinson was barely over 40 per cent on shorthanded face-offs last season, between Chicago and Edmonton.

Does Mattias Janmark need to be replaced, or can he regain form as a top killer? Does the back end need a Logan Stanley type to simply focus on keeping pucks out of the net? What about UFA Adam Henrique, or the questionable practice of Connor McDavid killing penalties?

Should McDavid even be killing penalties, or are these the duties of the bottom of your roster, to give them some ownership?

2: Oh, I don’t know… FIND A GOALIE!

Here’s some irony: you could make the argument that the top two UFA goalies right now — after Sergei Bobrovsky and Frederik Anderson, who are likely to stay put — are Connor Ingram and Stuart Skinner.

In our opinion, Bowman has until July 1 to trade for someone’s backup. Try to emulate Minnesota when the Wild heisted Filip Gustavsson from Ottawa.

If he hasn’t made that trade by July 1, then signing Connor Ingram is a must. You simply can not go into the season with Tristan Jarry as your No. 1, as the confidence in Jarry just is not there, inside or outside of the Oilers dressing room.

Other than Bobrovsky and Anderson, the UFA goalie market is stocked entirely with backups. So Bowman, unlike any Oilers GM since Kevin Lowe traded for Dwayne Roloson 20 years ago, is charged with finding the next Mikka Kiprusoff — someone’s second- or third-stringer who is trapped behind established goaltending.

3: Don’t blow July 1

2025: Jeff Skinner and Viktor Arvidsson, courtesy of acting GM Jeff Jackson.

2026: Andrew Mangiapane, just a few days after handing Trent Frederic an eight-year, $30.8 million deal.

Skinner and Arvidsson were both healthy scratches in the 2025 Stanley Cup run, while Mangiapane was unloaded at the 2026 trade deadline, just six lacklustre months into a two-year deal Bowman signed him to.

Good teams can become great at the deadline. The Oilers haven’t helped themselves there for two years.

It’s not a great free-agent year, but there are some depth signings out there (Brett Kulak? Vincent Desharnais?) that can make this team better defensively.

And the UFA decisions extend to his own roster, with Jack Roslovic, Kasperi Kapanen, Max Jones, Henrique and Curtis Lazar joining Dickinson and Murphy as UFAs.

We have our thoughts on who should stay and who Bowman should pass on, but it’s the GM’s thoughts that matter. And there is no more room for error.

4 — Who’s Going To Coach This Thing

If Kris Knoblauch is going to be your coach, great. Then get out of his way and let him coach.

If not, get hold of Bruce Cassidy and give him the time he needs to build a staff.

Last season, Knoblauch didn’t want Paul Coffey on his staff, but halfway through the season, management inserted Coffey into the picture anyhow. In the end, his impact was minimal, and the guy he pushed aside — Mark Stuart — failed miserably with the penalty-killing units.

Too much change, too much outside influence. Not enough success.

Bowman and the people above him need to stabilize the coach’s room and give them the freedom it takes to run an NHL team. Or pick someone else and do the same.