The scoreboard on the recent trip to Dallas read 7-2, and the visiting dressing room had suddenly gone quiet. Not the stunned silence of a team being outworked in a tight game, but instead, the hollow, ominous quiet of a dressing room that has seen this before. The camera found Connor McDavid on the bench somewhere around the fifth goal, jaw set, eyes forward, saying nothing. There is nothing to say.
March in Edmonton, and the greatest player alive is watching his team get dismantled while the rest of the hockey world quietly updates its narrative: maybe this Oilers team is just average.
Can Edmonton End the Drought?
That word — average — lands differently when you’ve watched two consecutive Stanley Cup Final losses to Florida. This season was supposed to be different. Those back-to-back Finals defeats to the Panthers were supposed to throw fuel on a fire that would surely culminate with a three-decade-long drought ending this summer. Then March 19th happened.
The Oilers confirmed Leon Draisaitl — 97 points in 65 games, the most productive second player in the league, bar none — was done for the regular season with a lower-body injury. Oil Country is now praying that he hasn’t taken his side’s hopes of ending the drought to the treatment room with him.
92 points through 73 games. McDavid is at 121 points — 41 goals, 80 assists — a number so staggering it belongs in a different conversation than the one his team is having. Evan Bouchard has been sensational: 84 points, leading all NHL defencemen in scoring, an overtime winner against Vegas in late March that briefly made you believe. But Draisaitl is on the couch. Mattias Janmark had season-ending surgery. Trent Frederic has no return timeline.
Online betting sites haven’t completely given up on the Oilers just yet. The latest Sportaza online gambling odds currently list them as a +1300 shot to finally claim the Stanley Cup at long last this term. But that is only good enough for fifth place in the odds list. So, who are the four teams considered more likely? And, crucially, does Edmonton have any hope of upsetting them once the playoffs get underway?
Colorado Avalanche
Nathan MacKinnon has 117 points. 48 goals. 69 assists. In 71 games. He set an Avalanche all-time record on opening night and barely broke stride. Colorado went 19-1-6 at one point this season — a run that tied the 1979-80 Flyers in the NHL history books — and has been the clear outright favourite for most of the calendar year. Then there’s Cale Makar: 72 points from the blue line, the undisputed best defenceman on the planet. Bouchard is having a career year. Makar is having a Makar year. There is a difference, and it’s an uncomfortable one for Oilers fans.
The one crack? Gabriel Landeskog’s leg has been week-to-week deep into March, and Nicolas Roy has missed time with an upper-body injury. A depleted Colorado is merely dangerous. A healthy Colorado is the nightmare scenario — the matchup that keeps Jay Woodcroft’s successors awake. Martin Necas, at 89 points, adds depth no Oilers fan wants to think about. At +300, the Avs represent the surefire betting favourites.
Tampa Bay Lightning
Nobody had this coming. The Lightning trimmed their goals-against from 267 to 216 last season; the expectation was a competitive playoff team, perhaps a second-round run. Instead, Tampa went 19-1-1 at one point, drifted from +500 at the Olympic break to +390, and became the second-best team on the board, odds shortening all the time.
Jon Cooper has been to four Stanley Cup Finals since 2015. Four. Championship muscle memory is a real thing in May and June — it lives in the bench decisions in overtime, in the penalty kill when everything is on the line, in the way a team that has been here before doesn’t flinch.
Victor Hedman anchors one of the NHL’s better defensive structures; his absence for personal reasons is a genuine concern, but one that is expected to be resolved sooner rather than later. Nikita Kucherov missed Saturday’s game with illness. Without Hedman, Tampa’s Cup chances diminish significantly — he is the spine. With him? Cooper’s systems could neutralize McDavid’s brilliance in ways that would make for a very short, very painful series.
Carolina Hurricanes
Quietly, relentlessly, Carolina has been the team nobody is talking about enough. First in the Metropolitan Division at 46-20-6 through 71 games. Rod Brind’Amour coached his 600th game this season and holds the record for most wins at that milestone — an achievement that tells you everything about the organizational stability the Oilers have spent years chasing.
Sebastian Aho, 72 points, is the Eastern Conference’s most complete two-way centre; Andrei Svechnikov has 61 points, building on a strong 2025 playoff run; Seth Jarvis rounds out a top six with the kind of genuine depth scoring Edmonton hasn’t had since Draisaitl went down.
Pyotr Kochetkov has been out since early March with a hip problem — their one real vulnerability. But the Carolina way — the defensive structure, the compete level, the Brind’Amour blueprint — is the polar opposite of everything that has been broken about Edmonton this season. Many experts argue that +500 undervalues them. They’re probably right.
Dallas Stars
Yes. The same Dallas Stars that just put seven goals past Tristan Jarry in regulation. The Mikko Rantanen trade was a statement of intent, and when healthy, this roster has legitimate star power throughout. But Tyler Seguin tore his ACL in February — season over, playoffs over, leadership gone. Rantanen has a lower-body injury with no clear timeline. Roope Hintz is out until at least April 9. Three key players. One crumbling injury report.
Does Dallas have enough left standing? They clinched a fifth consecutive playoff berth in late March, which tells you something about the organization’s depth. But at +1000, the market has already priced in significant concern. A depleted Stars team is the matchup Edmonton might actually want — just don’t forget what they did to the Oilers six weeks ago with a full lineup.
