Miraculously, after starting the season 3–9–1 and firing Head Coach Jay Woodcroft, the Edmonton Oilers find themselves chasing first places all around the league.
Connor McDavid sits 10 points behind Nikita Kucherov for tops in the NHL. The Oilers’ power play ranks second behind the Tampa Bay Lightning, and they sit just 0.13 goals per game behind the first-place Colorado Avalanche. Zach Hyman is tied for second in goals, and most importantly, Edmonton still has a chance to win the Western Conference.
With so much offensive success, it’s not hard to see how the Oilers have completely turned their season around. So let’s see what it would take the rest of the way for the team and its players to end up league leaders.
McDavid’s point chase
Only three players have ever notched 100 assists in a season: Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, and Bobby Orr. With 86 so far this year, McDavid is on pace to join them. His only competition for the league lead in assists is Nikita Kucherov, who sits five behind him.
But McDavid could also end the year first in total points with a strong finish.
As of now, he’s 10 back with 15 games remaining. The only players ahead of him are Kucherov, who sits at 122 points, and Nathan MacKinnon, who has 117. Both Kucherov and MacKinnon have 13 games left, while McDavid has 15.
McDavid started the season with just 10 points in his first 11 games before Woodcroft was fired. Since then, he’s played at a 155-point pace with 24 goals and 78 assists in 54 games. If he keeps this pace up, he’ll finish the year with 140 points.
That would give Kucherov room for only 17 points in his final 13, and MacKinnon 22. Neither of them may get to 140, but McDavid will probably need to finish around 145 if he wants to win the Art Ross.
The Oilers team offence is near the top of the league
Unsurprisingly, the Oilers’ goal-scoring numbers are near the league’s top. Any team with McDavid and Leon Draisaitl is going to put the puck in the net, but the Oilers have a chance to repeat as the league’s highest-scoring team and the league’s best powerplay.
At 3.58 goals a game, Edmonton sits fourth in the league in scoring. But they are just 0.13 behind the league-leading Avalance, whom they’ve been outpacing since February 1.
A couple more blowout wins like Thursday’s over the Buffalo Sabres and the Oilers could easily finish the year as the best-scoring team in the NHL.
It’ll be harder for them to catch Tampa Bay as the league’s number one team on the man advantage, as they are over 2% behind. But as we saw last year, the power play can explode at any moment.
In the 2022–23 season, Edmonton’s power play ran at 32.4%, over 6% higher than anyone else. If the Oilers can run at a similar rate for the rest of the year, and Tampa slows down, they could catch them.
A couple of top goal-scorers
If you asked any Edmonton fans before the year which Oiler they thought would be second in league goal scoring at the end of March, they would’ve said McDavid or Draisaitl. No one could have seen Hyman—who set a career-high with 36 goals last year—with 48 at this point, on pace for almost 60.
It’s a long shot Hyman ends up winning the Rocket Richard. He sits nine back of league leader Auston Matthews with just 15 games to go and would probably have to score over a goal a game to finish on top. But even coming close is a revelation for the Oilers. Making just $5.5M a year, Hyman might be the best contract in the league.
Evan Bouchard sits only three goals back from the defencemen goal-scoring lead with 15. There are a lot of d-men in contention, Roman Josi has 18, Cale Makar and Rasmus Dahlin have 17, and Mackenzie Weegar has 16.
If the Oilers’ power play heats up, Bouchard will be a big part of it. Sitting just three goals back, he could easily finish as the best defenceman goal scorer in the league.
First in the West
If the Oilers want to avoid playing the three-seed in the Pacific, they’ll need to catch the Vancouver Canucks. Vancouver, the leader of the Pacific Division and the Western Conference, sits eight points up on Edmonton, but has played three more games. For the Oilers to catch them, they’ll need to win their games in hand and continue their hot stretch.
Winning the West would be huge. The Oilers would get home-ice advantage until at least the Stanley Cup Finals, great for a team with a 23–8–3 record at Rogers Place this year.
It would also mean they play the worst team in the conference in the first round, presumably the Vegas Golden Knights or Los Angeles Kings. The Oilers eliminated L.A. in the first round last year, and Vegas has been struggling pretty badly recently, going 4–6–0 in their last ten.
Even if none of these things happen, the Oilers’ turnaround this year has been remarkable. At the end of November, most people thought Edmonton’s season was already over.
McDavid, Hyman, Bouchard, and the rest of the team should be proud of what they’ve achieved, and hopefully, they’ll be rewarded as some of the league’s leaders.
Photo by Bailey Hillesheim/Icon Sportswire
