After making it to the Stanley Cup times six times in their first 11 seasons, the Oilers didn’t make it back to the final round again for 15 seasons, on an improbable cinderella run as the eighth seed in the Western Conference.
Instead of building on that run, the Oilers ended up going in the complete opposite direction, missing the playoffs for 10 straight seasons. In that time frame, the rebuild was in full effect, to the tune of four first-overall picks, including a generational talent in Connor McDavid.
But now, 18 years later, the Oilers have finally made it back to the Stanley Cup Final, a prospect that at many times over the last few years has looked like an absolute certainty at times, and an almost impossible task at others.
Two Oilers teams making it to the final over the course of 18 years, but in two very different scenarios. So, how does the “Cinderella” squad stack up against the “Cup or Bust” boys?
The Superstars
Let’s start with the biggest fish for each team: the superstar(s), the player(s) who carry(ied) their team on their back. You can’t get to the finals without at least one, and these teams are no different.
2006: Chris Pronger
The 2006 team had only one player that could be considered a superstar, but he was a really, really, REALLY good one: Chris Pronger.
After a bitter lockout that resulted in a lost season, the hard salary cap was sold as a saviour to small market teams like Edmonton, that continuously lost their star players due to bigger market teams being able to pay more.
And boy, did that new CBA deliver on that promise in a hurry.
Because those bigger market teams had to cut salary in order to get under the newly implemented $39 million cap, the door was open for other teams to acquire players that they could no longer afford (well, well, how the turntables…). One such team that suffered this type of personnel loss was the St. Louis Blues.
Just four years after the Oilers had to trade their superstar and captain, Doug Weight, to the Blues due to financial considerations, the Blues traded their own superstar and (former) captain, Pronger, to the Oilers. Pronger was just four years removed from a Hart and Norris Trophy winning year, and was an absolute coup for the Oilers to get.
Looking at the numbers, you would get the impression that Pronger was certainly a top defenceman in the league. He finished ninth in the league in defencemen scoring with 56 points in 80 games, and eighth with 44 assists. He was fourth amongst defencemen in power play points with 42. He was also second in the league in time on ice per game, at a whopping 27: 59, almost four-and-a-half minutes more per game than his next closest teammate, Jaroslav Spacek.
In the playoffs, Pronger took his game to an even higher level.
In leading the Oilers to the finals, Pronger finished third in league scoring, with 21 points in 24 games. The next closest defenceman was teammate Spacek, with 14 points. He was again second in the league in time on ice per game, at an even higher 30:57, five minutes more than Spacek. It should be noted that the player with the highest ice time, Nicklas Lidstrom, only played six games to Pronger’s 24.
Fancy stats weren’t all the rage back then, so we don’t have much to go on to show just how dominant he really was outside the eye test, but that was more than enough. Pronger was mean, had one of, if not the, best first passes in the game and was just an overall beast.
How good was Pronger? In his first season with three different teams, he took each of them to the Stanley Cup Final.
Without a doubt, Pronger is one of the best playoff performers in Oilers history.
2024: Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl
Speaking of the best playoff performers in Oilers history, why not talk about two guys who are also two of the best playoff performers in the entire NHL’s history
Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl are undisputed superstars and arguably the two best players in the game. Between the two of them, they own six Art Ross Trophies, five Ted Lindsey Trophies, four Hart Trophies and one Rocket Richard Trophy. Between 2016-17 and 2022-23, only one year saw neither of them win any hardware.
What might be even more impressive is how much better they are in the playoffs.
McDavid has 106 points in 67 playoff games, which already places him 92nd in all time playoff scoring. Meanwhile, Draisaitl is just one point and one spot behind him. That puts them at third and fourth respectively on the all time playoff points per game list behind only Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux.
In 2021-22, both players post 2+ points per game, with McDavid’s 33 points being the 21st most in one playoff run in NHL history and Draisaitl’s 32 tied for 22nd. They led the entire league in playoff scoring, despite the fact that the Oilers lost in the Conference Finals. Last season, despite being ousted in the second round, they still finished sixth and eighth in playoff scoring.
This year is no different, with McDavid leading the way with 31 points and Draisaitl right behind him with 28.
Winner?
If the Oilers had only one of these players, you could argue it would be a toss up between them and Pronger in terms of impact. But when it’s two against one, it is no contest. Round 1 goes to 2024.
Forwards
2006:
Ryan Smyth – Shawn Horcoff – Ales Hemsky
Fernando Pisani – Michael Peca – Raffi Torres
Radek Dvorak – Jarret Stoll – Sergei Samsonov
Ethan Moreau – Rem Murray – Georges Laraque/Todd Harvey
Brad Winchester – Toby Petersen
The 2006 group was a solid, deep group of forwards, with five forwards hitting career highs that year.
There was a clear first line in Smyth-Horcoff-Hemsky, with both Hemsky and Horcoff putting up career best point totals of 77 and 73 respectively and Smyth scoring 36 goals, the second most of his career. In the playoffs, Horcoff finished second on the team and led all forwards with 19 points (also good for fourth among all forwards in the NHL), while Hemsky and Smyth were right behind him with 17 and 16 points respectively.
After that were two lines that could each probably be described as 2B/3A, depending on the game.
Stoll scored a career high 22 goals and 68 points, finishing third on the team. Torres scored a career high 27 goals (second on the team) and 41 points. Pisani had his best season with 18 goals and 37 points, and led the NHL in playoff goals with 14 (you may have heard about that once or twice) and was tied for fifth among forwards in points.
While Peca’s regular season didn’t live up to the hype, especially not in comparison to his fellow big offseason acquisition Pronger, he still played solid for the Oilers, and and has almost half as many points (11) in the playoffs as he did in the regular season (23). Meanwhile, deadline acquisition Samsonov was lights out after coming to the team, scoring 16 points in 19 games. He continued that strong play with 15 points in 24 playoff games.
The fourth line had solid, tough veterans in Moreau, Laraque, and Harvey, as well as feel good story Murray, who returned to his original team after recovering from dystonia.
Youngster Winchester provided some spark, scoring his first ever NHL goal that playoffs, while Petersen managed to score a goal in his two appearances.
Overall, this was a blue collar group with touches of skill, perfect for a team like Edmonton. Eight forwards had 10+ points, showing that it truly was a team effort. It was a strong homegrown corps as well, with only Peca, Samsonov, Harvey, and Murray not having been in the Oilers system the season prior (and of course, Murray doesn’t really count since he was an Oiler previously).
2024:
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins – Connor McDavid – Zach Hyman
Ryan McLeod – Leon Draisaitl – Corey Perry
Dylan Holloway – Adam Henrique – Evander Kane
Mattias Janmark – Sam Carrick/Derek Ryan – Connor Brown
Warren Foegele
We have already talked about McDavid and Draisaitl, but the rest of the forwards deserve credit too.
Nugent-Hopkins fell down to earth a bit this regular season after posting a career best 37 goals and 104 points last year, but is having the best playoffs of his career, tying his high of six goals and setting bests in assists (14) and point (20), and is currently tied for fourth in playoff scoring.
Hyman, meanwhile, had a career high 54 goals, and has followed it up in the playoffs, leading the league in goals with 14. His 18 points also place him seventh in league scoring.
After that is interesting, as many players have gone up and down (and in and out of) the lineup. All of McLeod, Perry, Kane, Holloway, Henrique, and Foegele have spent a fair amount of time in the top-six, while even Janmark has had a couple looks.
It appears to track, given the lack of production after the top four forwards. The next highest scorer is Kane with four goals and eight points, which isn’t terrible, and Henrique has four points in only 10 games after being out with an injury. After them, though, the dropoff is significant.
The mainstays on the fourth line, Janmark and Brown, also have four points each (although Brown in only 12 games), along with Holloway. Meanwhile, the middle-sixers of Feogele, Perry, and McLeod have a combined four points. It is therefore unsurprising that they have all seen themselves become healthy scratches at points this postseason.
Carrick and Ryan tend to switch with each other, or when one of the above noted players are scratched, and provide some energy for what has become an extremely solid fourth line.
The Oilers also have Sam Gagner, Adam Erne, and James Hamblin as black aces who have yet to play in the playoffs, but played a fair number of games in the regular season. I think lots of Oilers fans would love to see Gagner get a game in during the Finals, but that seems unlikely at this point.
Winner?
While the top end of this Oilers team is in another stratosphere compared to the ’06 team, the ’06 team’s depth scoring was better. Mind you, the Oilers depth this year has been winning hockey games from the defensive side of things, including a record setting penalty kill, so they aren’t doing nothing out there.
If we are including Draisaitl and McDavid, then 2024 wins just by virtue of them alone. If we look at it from just the depth perspective though, it becomes a whole lot closer, and I’m not sure if Hyman and Nugent-Hopkins cover the spread based on the actual performance of the rest of the forwards.
The potential for the 2024 Oilers forwards though is much higher, as the 2006 forwards were all operating at their best where the majority of the Oilers this year are not, at least from an offensive perspective.
Defencemen
2006:
Chris Pronger – Jaroslav Spacek
Jason Smith – Steve Staios
Marc-Andre Bergeron – Dick Tarnstrom/Matt Greene
We’ve already talked about Pronger, and a bit about Spacek, who was a hell of pre-deadline add by GM Kevin Lowe. At the time of the trade, Spacek had 24 points in 45 games with the Chicago Blackhawks, leading their defence in scoring and fourth overall on their team. He was also second on their team in time on ice, at 23 minutes per game.
Spacek thrived in Edmonton, scoring 19 points in 31 games and a further 14 points in 24 playoff games, and was second on the team in ice time at 25:53 per game. Spacek wasn’t just an offensive weapon either – he was third among the team’s defencemen in shorthanded ice time, third in hits and fourth in blocks. The only bad thing was he was the only defenceman on the team with a negative plus-minus at minus-three.
Smith and Staios were a solid, steady defensive pairing. You could throw them out against anyone and not be worried, and they had snarl to them that made opposing teams pay. During the playoffs, they each played 21+ minutes a night, and Smith had the second best plus-minus on the team at plus-five.
Smith led the league during the playoffs in hits with 59 and blocks with 67. Staios was sixth in blocks with 55. Smith was also fourth in the league for shorthanded time on ice per game at six minutes per game (it was a different time). Fun fact: Smith was also the only defenceman on the team to score a game winning goal, which coincidentally was also his only goal of the postseason.
The third pairing saw a lot less of the ice. Bergeron led the three players at 14:56 per game, then Tarnstrom at 14 and finally Greene at just 10:03. Interestingly, Greene played eight more games than Tarnstrom, who was another pre-deadline get by Lowe to stabilize the defense.
Greene was fourth on the team in hits, which given his low ice time meant he led the team in hits/60 by over two hits. He was also third in blocks/60 and led the team in takeaways/60. Unfortunately, many Oilers fans blame Bergeron for the Oilers losing the cup that year, given his role in the injury of Dwayne Roloson.
Prior to Spacek and Tarnstrom arriving, Bergeron was the player who found himself next to Pronger during the regular season, and he rewarded the Oilers with a crazy 13 goals and 26 points in 48 games. While known as a PP menace with his slapshot (and he led the Oilers at the time with six PPG along with Pronger) he also had seven even strength goals, which led the entire league, and 13 even strength points, leading the team.
Tarnstrom, who arrived the same day as Spacek, only scored four points in his 22 regular season games, and just two assists in his 12 playoff games. Those were disappointing numbers after he was coming off 41 and 52 point seasons with Pittsburgh, but he was relegated to a bottom pairing role which was certainly a factor. He was still third on the team in takeaways/60 in the regular season, and was fourth on the team for blocks/60 and the least giveaways/60 during the playoffs.
2024
Mattias Ekholm – Evan Bouchard
Darnell Nurse – Cody Ceci
Brett Kulak – Vincent Desharnais
Philip Broberg
Ekholm and Bouchard have solidified themselves as not just a legitimate top pair, but one of the best in the league, and especially during these playoffs. They have played the most time on ice as a pairing, and have the second best CF% for pairings who have played over 200 minutes (just behind their rival first pairing in the Stanley Cup Final, Aaron Ekblad and Gustav Forsling) and third for pairings above 150 minutes (behind Dmitry Orlov and Jalen Chatfield). They have the highest GF% and the highest HDCF at 69, which is very nice work.
Bouchard has had a huge coming out party these playoffs, as he leads all defensemen in scoring with 27 points, 11 higher than second place Miro Heiskanen, which is also good for third in the league behind only McDavid and Draisaitl. He is tied for the lead in defensemen goals at six, meaning he has more than double the assists of Heiskanen.
Perhaps the craziest thing is that the next highest scoring defenseman on the Oilers is his partner Ekholm, who only has seven, a whopping 20 fewer.
On the other side of the coin, the pairing with the worst CF% and GF% in the league among pairings that have played 150+ minutes these playoffs is the Nurse-Ceci pairing.
Luckily, it appears that the Oilers are moving away from that to Nurse and Kulak. While they may not have the best metrics together, they do have FF% and xGF% above 50%, miles ahead of Nurse-Ceci.
Nurse has been a lightning rod these playoffs, as he has not produced offensively (only five points) and defensively has been less than stellar, including a league worst minus-13. He has seemed to turn it around playing with Kulak, however.
Kulak and Desharnais have been a decent enough third pairing, with positive FF% and xGF%. However, Desharnais ended up being scratched the last three games of the Dallas series, and Broberg stepped in. Broberg has played almost all of his time with Ceci, and they have a surprisingly good CF% of 55.81%.
Winner?
The defence corps seem actually pretty close. There is definitely an argument to be made that the top pairings are equal, but at the end of the day, Pronger is Pronger. The second pair for the ’06 team on paper would arguably seem worse than the ’24 team, but given the subpar performance in the playoffs so far, the ’06 teams wins that battle as well.
I do think the third pairing for this Oilers edition is better than the previous one, although it is interesting to note that they both had two younger defencemen, one tough nosed stay at home RD and one more skilled LD, paired with a veteran defenceman.
So, this round goes to the ’06 team, too.
Goalies
2006
Dwayne Roloson
Jussi Markkanen
Ty Conklin
Goaltending for the ’06 Oilers during the regular season was by far the biggest story line, and also probably the reason the team didn’t finish higher in the standings.
That all changed when the Oilers acquired Roloson, although it was a rough go for his first three games, where he let in 13 total goals.
But in the playoffs, Roloson was the biggest hero and became an Oilers legend. He had the second best save percentage of goalies who played over 10 games (behind future Oiler Ilya Bryzgalov) and the third best GAA (behind Bryzgalov and the cup winning goalie Cam Ward). He also led the NHL goalies in points, with two assists, including a beautiful pass to Michael Peca shorthanded.
But the most iconic save was Roloson robbing Rocket Richard winner Jonathan Cheechoo in double overtime in Game 3 of the second round, saving the Oilers from going down 3-0:
It wasn’t the only highlight reel save Roli made that run, but it is definitely the biggest one.
After Roloson was injured in Game 1, Ty Conklin stepped in as the backup who was dressed that game. It would be the one and only game he would play, seeing as a misplay behind the net with just 30 seconds left in a tie game resulted in the Oilers losing that game.
Markkanen, who was the Oilers’ main guy before the Roloson trade, stepped in admirably for the rest of the series. While the Oilers lost Game 2 5-0, Markannen bounced back, winning three of the next five games, posting a save percentage of .900 or better in four of them, including a shutout in Game 6 to force a Game 7.
2024
Like the ’06 team, goaltending this season has been one of the biggest stories for the Oilers.
During the Oilers early struggles, it looked like the tandem of Skinner and Jack Campbell was going to sewer the Oilers season. Skinner eventually turned it around, setting an Oilers record for consecutive games won by a goalie on route to 36 wins on the season and a .905 save percentage.
Pickard came into the season as the third-string goalie, but after being called up to replace Campbell, had a good season, going 12-7 with a team leading .909 save percentage and 2.45 GAA.
Unlike ’06, goaltending became an issue again in these playoffs. Out of his 16 games, Skinner has a save percentage below .900 in 8 of them, including two below .800.
He ended up being benched for two games in the Vancouver series, allowing Pickard to get a chance. Pickard won his first game, stopping 19 of 21 shots, earning him the next start. He ended up losing that game, although it certainly wasn’t his fault, as he stopped 32 of 35 shots against.
That led to Skinner getting another shot, and he has been better since. He won the first three games, but then lost the next two, including letting in four goals to lose Game 3 of the Western Conference Final. That led to the question again about if Skinner is the guy to lead the Oilers, and further talk about Pickard coming back in. Coach Kris Knoblauch stuck with Skinner, however, and it paid off. He won another three straight and saved the Oilers in their Game 6 and series win, stopping all but one of the 34 shots he faced when the Oilers only managed 10 shots of their own.
Winner?
While Skinner has turned it around again, Roloson was miles better and a much bigger reason for the Oilers’ success that season. ’06 hands down.
Final Verdict?
The ’06 team has won two of the three categories, and arguably the two most important ones. By basic math, that should make them the winner.
However, this version of the Oilers has the potential to be better. If all the players on the Oilers played their best, as the ’06 team did, then the fact that the Oilers have both McDavid and Draisaitl likely outweighs the effect of Pronger.
It really is a battle of two very different teams with different styles of play – a gritty hardworking team versus a high-octane skilled team. We’ve seen this year’s Oilers team play a somewhat similar Kings team in terms of grit and defence, although their goaltending was not close to Roloson level and 2024 Drew Doughty is not Pronger.
I think over a full series, the consistency of the ’06 teams wins in six games, but in a one-game matchup, such as a Game 7, I would not bet against a team led by McDavid and Draisaitl.
Is that a cop out answer? Sure, but in reality I don’t think there is a wrong answer here.
Let’s just hope this year’s Oilers team can do what the ’06 team unfortunately could not – bring the Stanley Cup back home to Edmonton.
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