If there’s one trend that new head coach Mike Babcock can change for the Edmonton Oilers this season, its avoiding the slow start. It seems like during the last seven seasons, the Oilers have always seemed to be playing catch-up after falling behind in the early stages of every NHL campaign.
Frederik Andersen has already lived through one version of life as Mike Babcock’s starting goaltender. It involved 66 starts in consecutive seasons, public pressure in Toronto, and enough trust for Babcock to travel to Denmark to meet Andersen’s family after a playoff elimination.
This August, Oilersnation will ask one question about every Edmonton Oilers player projected to be on the 2026-27 roster in preparation for the upcoming season.
The Edmonton Oilers have accumulated plenty of goaltending depth throughout their organization, but they may now be approaching the point where having too many options creates another problem.
Beau Akey does not need to play an NHL game for this season to be a success. After everything that has interrupted his development, simply putting together a healthy, dependable season with the Edmonton Oilers’ American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate, Bakersfield Condors, might be more valuable.
The NHL has had an interesting new millennium. It was a league sans a salary cap when the 2000s started… and then the owners locked the players out for an entire season.
One of the Edmonton Oilers’ top goaltending prospects is coming to North America, as Eemil Vinni has signed a one-year, AHL contract with the Bakersfield Condors.
NHL.com’s Derek Van Diest just detailed a list of the top prospects in the system for the Edmonton Oilers. It ranks the top five players with the best chance of making an impact in the NHL, but it got me thinking.
There wasn’t much about Beau Akey’s first season of professional hockey that went according to plan. Before the campaign even started, the Edmonton Oilers’ 2023 second-round pick sustained an injury that sidelined him for a month.
Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid have been tied at the hip throughout their NHL careers so far, as first-overall picks, superstars, and now captains of two big Canadian-market teams in the Toronto Maple Leafs and Edmonton Oilers.
The Edmonton Oilers need a long-term successor for Zach Hyman, and Toronto Maple Leafs winger Matthew Knies represents almost the perfect candidate. Acquiring him, however, would require Edmonton to surrender one of its best young players.
Zach Hyman remains one of the Edmonton Oilers’ most important forwards, but the organization cannot ignore the need to begin planning for life without him.
People will talk about the “Mount Rushmore” for a franchise, which is to say the four people, usually four players, that most define the franchise. Not always the four-best players, but the four that evoke the essence of the franchise.
2026-27 marks the final season the Calgary Flames will play at the Scotiabank Saddledome as they await the arrival of their new arena. The Saddledome opened in 1983 as the Olympic Saddledome, in preparation for the 1988 Olympic Winter Games.
Oilersnation is reviving the Top 100 Edmonton Oilers of All Time list, a project originally created by the late Robin Brownlee in 2015. Shawn Horcoff comes in at No.
Count me amongst the admirers of Josh Samanski’s defensive game. When the Edmonton Oilers were growing short on bodies, especially at centre, through the home stretch of the 2025–26 NHL season, Samanski seized the opportunity.
For years, Edmonton Oilers treated their cap space less like an asset and more like an emergency supply. The organization operated so close to the ceiling that an injury, recall, or unexpected opportunity could create another round of financial gymnastics.
If Edmonton Oilers superstars Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl were to never play another game in their NHL careers, they would be Hockey Hall of Fame locks, according to a recent analysis done by The Athletic.
The Edmonton Oilers and consistent, reliable goaltending have been enemies dating back to Dwayne Roloson’s heroic 2006 Stanley Cup run. Every few years, the Oilers stumble into stretches where a goalie performs admirably—sometimes even exceptionally—but the stability never lasts.
The Edmonton Oilers do not need an analytics department to explain why last season was disappointing. A first-round playoff exit supplied all the evidence anyone needed.
The Pittsburgh Penguins and Edmonton Oilers have spent the summer creating two very different traffic jams, which eventually send Penguins GM Kyle Dubas and Oilers GM Stan Bowman toward the same solution.
Edmonton Oilers general manager Stan Bowman’s 2027 offseason decisions will not begin next June. Several of them will start taking shape the moment the Oilers open the 2026-27 season.
The Edmonton Oilers will carry three goalies on the roster to start the season, barring an injury in training camp or preseason. Stanley Cup champion Freddie Andersen turns 37 on Oct.
Every now and then, a player comes along who makes you rethink what you think you know about how the NHL works. Zach Hyman is one of those players. In The Hockey Writers’ draft profile of Braeden Cootes, Hyman was used as a comparison.
The Edmonton Oilers have hit a major organizational fork in the road after being bounced from the playoffs in the first round last year. Connor McDavid’s sweetheart two-year extension kicks in this season, and by the time next summer rolls around when he’s eligible to extend, there will be plenty of noise about what his future looks like.
The Oilers have had a bit of a busy summer, shaking things up both in goal and on the back end. The end result of those moves has them in a position they haven’t been in for a while.