What has to change for Oilers to take that one final step

EDMONTON — They’ve tried everything in Edmonton. Heck, they’ve accomplished nearly everything too.

There's just the one, big thing that remains.

And when it comes to that decade-long pursuit, we sense the hockey world is moving on.

Somehow, while everyone fully expects the Florida Panthers to rebound from 25th place last season and reinstall themselves as a legitimate Stanley Cup contender, the questions are more harsh for an Oilers team that also had an off year in 2025-26 — yet made the playoffs only to have their top four centres injured against Anaheim.

The Oilers are yesterday’s news, not like those impressive young Habs in Montreal.

But that’s fair.

Until you’ve done it, you haven’t done it. And no one cares how close you came (two Cup Finals), how many playoff games you’ve played (more than anyone in the past five springs) or how many individual trophies they handed you (a bunch).

The questions in Edmonton, on the day we open Connor McDavid’s 12th National Hockey League season, is simple: What have you done to change your course?

How far are you willing/able to depart from what you’ve done before, while still maintaining a team that won three playoff rounds in a row in the springs of 2024 and 2025?

Here’s the bad news: It’s an impossible question to answer, because that is just not how a hockey team operates internally.

“You can't tackle the Finals (in September) because you're not in the Finals. You can't tackle the Stanley Cup because you're not even there,” explained Oilers winger Zach Hyman. “We’ve got to play 84 games (first). So, we’ve got to tackle Game 1. That's the mindset.

“In the past, we've got caught looking too far ahead, and you can't do that,” Hyman continued. “You have to establish yourself first and foremost as a great regular-season team. We have to win the division. Like, we haven't done that since (1987), so that's a goal, right? And that even that's too forward looking …”

So what, exactly, has to change? Glad you asked:

Defensive game needs to be better

After a decade of trading chances in the tradition of “Oilers hockey,” it’s beyond time that Edmonton puts on its big boy pants defensively. There has simply been too many dangles at the offensive blue-line, too many backward passes off the half-wall that go the other way, too many odd-man rushes against, too many Evan Bouchard pizzas.

Edmonton’s game has been good enough to win multiple series against some excellent Western Conference teams. But when the Florida Panthers brought their aggressive, pinch-down game to town, it outlasted Edmonton. The Oilers hung in there, but when they needed production at the end of the two series’, it just wasn’t there.

You’re going to allow goals, they just have to require a greater level of work and commitment from the opponent. Will Mike Babcock make the Oilers a harder, more difficult team to score on? That’s the goal …

“I'm not the guy,” Babcock said. “The players are in charge of this. I'm going to try to help them, and that's my job here, totally.”

Need results from depth players

Going back to the Matt Hendricks years (2014-17), there have been depth issues here. Not necessarily “they can’t play” issues, but issues surrounding their roles and their usage.

Too much penalty-killing time being eaten up by top-six forwards; too much ice time overall for the big boys; not enough roles to allow all 12 forwards to feel like they have a hand in a winning team. The third- and fourth-liners wanted to help. Instead, they became The Help.

“We need way more depth, and if we're going to have success at playoff time, we need more and more depth,” Babcock said Monday. “That means we have to find players from within, and grow them. The other thing is, you’ve got to be patient enough not to just to jam the same guys out on the ice all the time.

“You’ve got to let everyone play, but sometimes there's a fine line there. Because they expect you to win every night too.”

Goaltending needs to deliver

No matter how tight your system, or responsible your puck play, eventually the other team is going to earn some scoring chances. At that moment, you need a save.

Not every time — remember, the other team is trying too. But once in a while the goalie has to cover up a mistake and steal a goal from the opposition, and the bigger the game the more vital this becomes.

Frederik Andersen opens the season in the injury list. Tristan Jarry is a big, fat question mark. He can win you games all season long, but what is his higher level, and does he get to it when the games truly matter?

And Devon Levi looks pretty good. But his next NHL game will be his 40th — he defines a guy who might be able to do it, but hasn’t done it yet.

The goaltending is still a question mark in Edmonton. If the environment in front of those goalies doesn’t improve, however, they won’t be a question mark at all.

We know what will happen, because we’ve watched it here for years.