Edmonton has always kept one eye on the standings and the other on the stat sheet. This season, the spreadsheets feel a little more crowded, with odds and lines sitting alongside shot shares and special-teams rates in everyday conversation. It’s not unusual now to hear fans trading a link like https://Lizaro.com/ca/ in the same breath as they debate defensive pairings. In that wider online betting environment, brands such as Lizaro Casino Online are simply part of the backdrop while Oil Country tries to figure out exactly what this team is.
A contender’s talent, a bubble team’s record
The 2025–26 Edmonton Oilers have been more work-in-progress than finished product through mid-December. Heading into this week, they sit at 13–11–5, good for 31 points and fourth place in a tightly packed Pacific Division, with 96 goals for and 102 against. On paper, that’s a bubble résumé rather than the juggernaut many expected after last spring.
The underlying story is less dramatic and more familiar. Edmonton is scoring at a top-end rate, giving a little too much back the other way, and leaning heavily on special teams to tilt nights in its favour. The power play has converted 24 times on 72 opportunities, a 33.3 per cent clip that remains one of the defining features of this roster, while the penalty kill is hovering just above 80 per cent.
Two games that capture 2025–26 in miniature
If you wanted a snapshot of the season so far, you could do worse than the wild Thursday nighter against the Seattle Kraken. Connor McDavid authored a hat trick and an assist in a 9–4 win, Leon Draisaitl added a goal and three helpers, and both Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Evan Bouchard piled up three assists. Edmonton went 4-for-5 on the power play, with additional goals from Matt Savoie (twice), Vasily Podkolzin, Zach Hyman, and Mattias Janmark. Calvin Pickard turned aside 28 shots as the Oilers improved to 3-2-1 over a six-game stretch.
Five days later, the other side of the coin showed up against Buffalo. The Oilers trailed 3–0 in the third period, only to roar back on the strength of two McDavid goals – including the equaliser with two seconds left – and another from Podkolzin. Stuart Skinner kept them within reach with 24 saves. Edmonton still dropped the extra point when Alex Tuch ended it 33 seconds into overtime.
That swing – overwhelming on one night, chasing the game on the next – has been a recurring theme. It’s why the club’s goal differential sits slightly in the red, even as the roster still looks and feels like a playoff team.
The numbers that actually drive the bus
Strip away the noise and the familiar pillars remain. McDavid leads the Oilers with 42 points in 29 games, on 14 goals and 28 assists. Draisaitl isn’t far back at 17 goals and 37 points, while Bouchard has quietly stacked 27 points from the blue line. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, in fewer games, is already over 20 points.
Bouchard’s usage tells part of the story: he’s averaging more than 23 minutes a night, quarterbacking a power play that still scares coaches across the conference. On the depth chart, new faces such as Podkolzin, Savoie and Jake Walman are giving Edmonton more ways to move the puck cleanly and extend offensive-zone time, even if the defensive details are still a work in progress.
In net, Skinner has carried most of the workload, with Pickard chipping in important wins like the Kraken rout. The team save percentage sits below where it needs to be for a true contender, but it has stabilised compared to the most turbulent stretches of recent years.
Where Lizaro Casino Online fits into the conversation
Since Bill C-218 opened the door to legal single-game sports betting in Canada in 2021, NHL odds have become part of the regular rhythm of game day for many fans. Sites that cover the Oilers, including The Oil Rig’s network partners, now routinely reference lines and props alongside more traditional pre-game notes.
Within that environment, Lizaro Casino Online is one of a number of brands whose names show up in timelines and group chats when people compare numbers. For a segment of the fan base, checking how the market views Edmonton – as a narrow favourite at home, a live underdog on the road, or something in between – is just another way of taking the team’s temperature before puck drop. The odds do not define the club, but they do reflect how the wider hockey world is reading its volatility.
Looking ahead in Oil Country
The rest of the winter sets up a fairly simple test. If the Oilers can nudge their five-on-five defending closer to break-even, keep the power play humming around that 30-plus per cent mark, and squeeze a few more percentage points out of the team save rate, their 13–11–5 record should start drifting upward.
When that happens, the numbers on the scoreboard, the stat pages, and even the betting screens will all start to tell a more consistent story. And for a fan base that parses every detail, from micro-stats to the latest read, the appeal lies in watching how those different sets of numbers converge on what they’ve believed about this group for years: there is still a contender in there, trying to skate its way out.
