The dust has barely settled on one of the most eventful offseasons in recent Edmonton Oilers history, and the oddsmakers have already delivered their verdict. New coach, new blueline, new goaltending plan, same expectation: this team is supposed to contend.
The opening Stanley Cup futures for 2026-27 have the Oilers at +1100 on both DraftKings and Bet365, tied for third-best in the league, while FanDuel is slightly more bullish at +1000. Only the champion Carolina Hurricanes and the Colorado Avalanche sit comfortably ahead, with Vegas and Florida hovering in the same range as Edmonton. For a team coming off a first-round exit to Anaheim, and one that has since traded Darnell Nurse and handed the bench to Mike Babcock, that is a striking amount of faith. As we covered in our free agency review, the roster that opens camp in September will look very different from the one that skated off the ice in the spring.
So are the books right? Let’s dig into what those numbers are really saying.
The market never gives up on McDavid
The first thing to understand about Oilers futures is that you will never get a bargain while Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl are in the lineup. Edmonton opened last season tied with Vegas for the shortest odds in the league, and even a six-game first-round loss to the Ducks has only nudged them down two or three spots on the board.
That is the McDavid tax. Oddsmakers know that any team with the best player in the world starts every season with a puncher’s chance, and the betting public in Alberta reliably piles on regardless of the price. The books shade Edmonton’s number accordingly.
It also means the odds tell us less about this specific roster than fans might assume. A +1100 Oilers team with Nurse and Kris Knoblauch and a +1100 Oilers team with Babcock, Ryan Shea and a three-headed goaltending experiment are, in the market’s eyes, roughly the same bet. That feels like a shortcut, because the changes this summer are anything but cosmetic.
The variables the odds are glossing over
Start in net. The plan to carry Tristan Jarry, Devon Levi and Frederik Andersen as a trio is genuinely novel, and the range of outcomes is enormous. If Andersen brings his championship form from Carolina and Levi finally converts his World Juniors and NCAA pedigree into NHL results, this could quietly become a strength. If Andersen’s injury history bites and Jarry’s .858 season proves less of an outlier than his career .907 suggests, Edmonton will be goalie shopping at the deadline yet again.
Then there is the bench. Babcock arrives with a resume full of wins and a reputation that needs no recap here. Reports of him already challenging the team’s stars suggest the honeymoon will be short. If it works, Edmonton gets the structure and defensive detail that has been missing in big moments. If it does not, things could get loud very quickly in a market that does not do quiet.
The blueline, meanwhile, has been remade on the fly. Nurse’s exit removes a lightning rod and a lot of minutes, while Shea and Shakir Mukhamadullin are being asked to slot into a group that must protect whichever goaltender wins the crease. There is a plausible version of this defence that is cheaper, quicker and better. There is also a version that misses Nurse’s 22 minutes a night more than anyone in Edmonton wants to admit.
Is there any value at +1100?
Here is the honest answer: not much, but perhaps a little more than usual. Historically, the average opening odds of the eventual Cup winner sit around +1300, so Edmonton’s price is at least in the territory where champions tend to come from. And unlike previous summers, there is a genuine case that the market is underreacting to the upside. If the goaltending trio produces even a league-average season in net, this is a team that took consecutive runs to the Stanley Cup Final not long ago with far worse goaltending.
For anyone weighing up a futures ticket, it pays to shop the number, because the gap between +1000 and +1100 is real money over a full season of bankroll decisions. Comparing prices across the best betting sites for NHL markets is the simplest edge available to a futures bettor, since the same Oilers ticket can pay meaningfully different amounts depending on where it is placed.
The smarter play, though, might be patience. The Blues famously drifted to +10000 midseason before winning it all in 2019, and if Babcock’s methods cause early turbulence in Edmonton, that opening +1100 could look generous by December. A slow October from a team integrating a new coach, a new defence and three goalies is not just possible, it is probable.
The verdict
The odds say the Oilers remain one of the four or five most likely teams to lift the Cup next June, and that feels about right. McDavid and Draisaitl guarantee the floor. Everything else, the Babcock experiment, the goalie carousel, the reshaped blueline, will determine whether +1100 was a fair price or a trap.
One way or another, nobody is going to be bored watching this team in 2026-27. In Edmonton, they never are.
