With a 4–1 win against the Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday, the Edmonton Oilers notched their eighth straight win, tying them for the second longest such streak in franchise history. It was also their eighth straight home win, which is also the second longest for the club.
In honour of the same, let’s take a look back on the other streaks Oilers teams have strung together in the past.
Nine-game win streak from February 20 to March 13, 2001 (Tied for franchise record)
Reading that header provides a couple surprises. First, that the franchise record for wins a row is only nine games. To put that in context, the league record is 17 games, and 25 teams have had longer winning streaks than this (including the Columbus Blue Jackets twice, with their highest being second at 16 wins).
The second is that this wasn’t set by one of the dominant ‘80s Oilers teams, but rather a team during a period where the Oilers were a financially struggling, small market team that was only three years past a potential relocation to Houston and was generally viewed as a farm team for the bigger NHL markets once their star players priced themselves out of Edmonton’s budget. To illustrate that fact, only three players on the team were 30 or older, with the average age of all players who suited up at least once that season being 24.9 years old.
Granted, the team had made it to the playoffs for four straight seasons, and on the back of this streak made that five in a row (which would also be the fifth season in a row they faced the Dallas Stars at some point, and unfortunately the fourth in a row they would lose to them).
This was the first year where the club was under the leadership of Kevin Lowe as GM and Craig MacTavish as head coach. Other changes to the team included some of those aforementioned trading of players who priced themselves out, such as Roman Hamrlik to the New York Islanders for Eric Brewer, and an early season trade of Bill Guerin to the Boston Bruins for Anson Carter and a first-round pick that was used on some guy named Ales Hemsky.
The major contributors
This team included many fan favourites for the fans who grew up during the Copper and Blue era, including Doug Weight (in what would be his last season with the Oilers), Janne Niinimaa, Todd Marchant, Mike Grier, Georges Laraque, and Tommy Salo.
Prior to the streak, the Oilers were hanging on to the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference.
The Oilers kicked off the streak with a 5–0 win over the Los Angeles Kings, with the main contributor with three assists being superstar *checks notes* Sergei Zholtok. Zholtok ended up leading the Oilers in scoring during this streak, with 10 points, notching a point in all but two games. That was half of his totals with the Oilers, and was only one point less than his totals with Montreal prior to being traded to the Oilers.
It was also the first of three shutouts during the streak, all courtesy of Tommy Salo. This streak also included Salo’s franchise record shutout streak of 192:53, just over 25 minutes more than Curtis Joseph’s prior record.
Fun fact: Salo holds four of the 10 top spots in franchise history for shutout streaks, and in this writer’s opinion should be next up for the Oilers Hall of Fame.
Other surprise contributors were Dan Cleary with nine points, Rem Murray with eight points, a rookie Mike Comrie posting six points, and Laraque with three goals and five points.
The Oilers scored the first goal in all nine games, and only trailed once through the streak for a total of 7:01 in the third period of Game 8 against the Carolina Hurricanes, until Eric Brewer scored to tie and Dan Cleary notched the winner (both assisted by Zholtok, of course).
The final game was a 5–4 overtime victory against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Unfortunately for this Oilers team, this was prior to the shootout, and so the streak ended with a tie against the Florida Panthers. They followed it up with an OT loss against the New Jersey Devils, resulting in a 12-game point streak, good for third in franchise history at the time.
Nine-game win streak from March 27 to April 13, 2023 (Tied for franchise record)
When you saw the “tied for franchise record” above, you probably thought it was a fakeout and that the tied team was from the ‘80s.
Nope. And if you did think that, then where were you last season?
As you may remember, at the trade deadline the Oilers swung a trade for Mattias Ekholm, and proceeded to go an outstanding 18–2–1 to close out the season, including winning the last nine games of the season.
Who contributed to the streak
As would be expected, Connor McDavid notched points in all nine games, with a total of 14. This was during a season ending 16 straight games with a point.
What is slightly surprising is that he was behind Ryan Nugent-Hopkins’ 15 points, although Leon Draisaitl led the team with 16 points.
Evan Bouchard was the fourth player on the team to notch a point per game, while Darnell Nurse, Nuge, and McDavid would tie his goals with four during the streak, behind only Draisaitl’s seven and Hyman’s five.
The Oilers would also get their only two shutouts of the season during this streak, with Stuart Skinner and Jack Campbell recording one each back to back.
Prior to this win streak, the Oilers had a points streak of six games going 5–0–1, and so ended up being the second highest point streak in team history at 15 games.
Like the other nine-game winning streak, this one would end in an OT loss. However, as it was Game 1 of the playoffs, it does not count as a point. If we did want to include playoff OT losses though, then this would have continued for a further six games for a total of 21 games, which would be five higher than the current record (which we will get to). At the very least, having 21 straight games of not losing in regulation is mighty impressive regardless.
Five eight-game win streaks occurring from October 29, 1983 to February 3, 1985
As expected, the ‘80s teams did string together some winning streaks, with eight of the 11 highest in franchise history. This includes five eight-game streaks, all occurring within a span of two seasons. The only other eight-game winning streak is the Oilers current one.
The 1983–84 team also actually started off the season with a seven-game winning streak, which means 31 of the teams 57 wins that season were during franchise record streaks. In addition, they also set the then Oilers point streak record with 13, only to be beaten by the next year’s team with 15.
Hilariously, this team also had a five-game losing streak, which was the second longest such streak in franchise history at the time, behind only a six-game streak in the team’s inaugural season.
Impressively, three of the five streaks did not have a single overtime game.
The Oilers scored 55, 50, and 53 goals during the streaks in the 1983–84 season, an average of 6.875, 6.24, and 6.625 goals per game, including scoring double digits in one game twice.
Records being set during this time
During these streaks, franchise records were set. The then third highest goal scoring streak in Oilers’ history (Wayne Gretzky with eight), the highest and second highest assist streaks (Gretzky with 17 and Jari Kurri with 15), and the then highest assist streak for defenceman (Paul Coffey with 11, including during all eight games of the winning streak). Kevin Lowe also recorded five games straight with an assist during one of those streaks, which is actually only the second highest streak of his career.
Gretzky also set the NHL points streak record with 51 straight games in 1983–84, which included scoring in all the games of two of these eight-game streaks. Kurri also notched points in all eight games of the first of these streaks, during a stretch where he scored in 18 straight games, while Coffey notched points in all eight games of the third streak of 1983–84, in the midst of a 12-game streak.
Nine playoff wins in a row from April 10 to May 7, 1985
So remember how the ‘80s teams didn’t set the record for a regular season winning streak? Yeah, that’s because they saved that for the playoffs.
The Oilers won their first nine games of the 1985 playoffs, not losing until Game 3 of Round 3 against the Chicago Blackhawks.
Mark Messier scored eight straight goals during this streak, in the midst of a 13-game streak, the then highest in Oilers history and then third highest streak in NHL history.
Even crazier, because Oilers won the last three games of the Stanley Cup Final the year prior, the Oilers actually had won 12 straight playoff games over multiple playoff years—the then NHL record and still second of all time.
Seven playoff wins in a row from May 10 to May 23, 2006
The Cinderella run in 2006 created lots of memories, and actually had the third highest amount of consecutive wins in Oilers playoff history with seven, when the Oilers won four straight to finish off the San Jose Sharks, and then won the first three games in the Conference Finals against the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.
Ryan Smyth led the team with nine points in the streak (scoring at least one point in the first six games), while Shawn Horcoff scored goals in each of the first four games and seven points in the first five games of the streak, starting it off with the memorable winner in the third OT period against San Jose. Chris Pronger was second on the team with eight points in the seven games, while Fernando Pisani tied Horcoff’s four goals during that span.
16 straight games with a point from February 27 to March 28, 2004
While not technically a win streak, the Oilers in 2004 set a franchise record by nabbing a point in 16 straight games.
Prior to the streak starting, the Oilers were 25–27–10–1. The streak boosted them to 35–27–12–5.
Half of the 16 games went to OT, including a crazy seven games in a row.
In a weird coincidence, both the first and last game of the streak came against the Phoenix Coyotes, and they also beat the Coyotes a third time in the midst of the streak too.
Smyth would pot 18 points over this stretch, while Eric Brewer and Marc-Andre Bergeron would lead the defencemen with 11 points each, with Bergeron finishing the streak off with a seven-game point streak. Pisani would score eight goals—half of his season total that year—and trade deadline acquisition Petr Nedved would notch 13 points in his 13 games on the team during the streak.
Unfortunately, the streak wasn’t enough for the Oilers, as they finished two points out of the playoffs, and to add insult to injury the next season was wiped out due to the NHL lockout.
Photo by Rick Tapia/Icon Sportswire
3 Comments