Analyzing the different lineup combinations the Edmonton Oilers could roll out in 2025–26

The major focus this year will be on letting the youth take over and prolong the Oilers’ contention window. Gone are Jeff Skinner, Connor Brown, Viktor Arvidsson, Evander Kane, and Corey Perry. In are Isaac “Ike” Howard, Matt Savoie, and David Tomasek, with younger veterans like Curtis Lazar joining the fold.

There’s many ways to assemble a lineup with these pieces, and no doubt Head Coach Kris Knoblauch will experiment during the regular season. Let’s dive in to some of the possibilities here.

The proven path of familiarity, and easing the kids in

Even with losing so many veterans from last year, this Edmonton team will have a bunch of familiar faces carrying over into this season. Quite a few of them have not only played together, but enjoyed success with each other. The one caveat, of course, is that the Oilers will begin the season with Zach Hyman finishing his recovery from injury.

Factoring in Hyman, the top line of him, Connor McDavid, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins could remain unchanged, and have an opportunity to gel again after something of a down year. As for the second line, the trio of Leon Draisaitl, Vasily Podkolzin, and Kasperi Kapanen had a solid showing in five playoff games this past spring. They gave up zero goals against, and combined for the grittiest series-winner this side of 2019 Pat Maroon.

Solidifying that as a top six allows the Oilers to give youngsters Howard and Savoie sheltered minutes as an energetic third line, mentored by newcomer Andrew Mangiapane. The fourth line would then feature incumbents Adam Henrique, Mattias Janmark, and Trent Frederic. A move to the wing for Janmark might actually be beneficial, as he struggled with face-offs last season.

PROJECTED FORWARD LINEUP:

The NHL’s best centre depth, with youth and speed on the wings

Perhaps the Oilers would want to continue having a reputation as a team with some of the strongest centre depth the league has to offer. While Nuge and Henrique had 2024–25 campaigns that weren’t at the level of years past, they can still reasonably bounce back for at least one more season. To that effect, continuing to run with a centre package of McDavid, Draisaitl, Nuge, and Henrique maintains success.

This also provides more of an opportunity for Howard, Savoie and the older Tomasek to each join different lines as wingers, and have not one but two experienced linemates to learn from. Howard would represent the speedy winger that McDavid could play the best with, Savoie gets some familiarity in having Draisaitl as his linemates, and Tomasek would carve out a third-line niche. The other winger on each line would be the type that can both keep up with their linemates, but come to their defence should the opposing team try to take liberties.

There’s a couple different options to go with here. One maintains familiarity, the other gets creative and empowers talents further down the lineup to step up their game. The familiarity angle looks something like this:

As for the creative projection, something like this:

A couple of other twists to consider

There’s still other players and combinations that could factor in to how the Edmonton lineup looks come the regular season. For one, maybe a veteran centre would work better if you’re putting both Howard and Savoie on the same line. For two, other depth players like Curtis Lazar and Noah Philp might force their way onto the opening night roster.

The main question with the centre models in the paragraph above is the advanced age of Nuge and Henrique. The Oilers could cut down the average age of their centres significantly though, and still have a passable lineup. It could look something like this (and would give Edmonton perfect balance of two left-shots and two right-shots):

And if you were to pair Howard and Savoie with a veteran centre like Nuge:

How will the defence lineup?

While mostly unchanged from last season, there are still going to be wrinkles in the defence this year to iron out. One forgotten acquisition is that of Alec Regula, who could not play last season due to injury. The other major factor is that younger defencemen, Ty Emberson and Cam Dineen, may come back stronger, and more determined to claim roster spots.

At the end of the 2025 season, this was a commonly-accepted defence game lineup:

While the first pair is almost certainly not going to change barring injury or an unforeseen internal development, the other two pairs definitely are interchangeable. Troy Stecher wasn’t even even a regular over the course of the playoffs, though he did still find some success as a Darnell Nurse whisperer.

For this exercise, let’s keep things simple. To follow are three extra potential combinations. One set will substitute Emberson in, another set will sub in both Emberson and Dineen. The third set will feature all of Emberson, Dineen, and Regula subbed in.

Straightforward, assuming Emberson gets the nod over Stecher, as has been the case before:

To include further defencemen, one player would have to be sat or injured, unless you go with an 11–7 combination. For the sake of not singling out another roster player, we’ll do the next two with placeholders in the lineup spots, to project where Emberson, Dineen, and Regula could slide into the lineup. An 11–7 will also be used, with names included, for Emberson and Dineen/Regula.

With Emberson and Dineen/Regula, set of six:

Emberson and Dineen/Regula, set of seven:

With all three, set of six:

All three, set of seven:

Knoblauch will always continue to try new things

If there’s one thing guaranteed amidst all of this, it’s that Knoblauch is eccentric with his game lineups. He sees the regular season as an opportunity to test-drive forward-line and defence-pair combinations, so that there’s always familiarity no matter what he has to go to in the playoffs. It has paid dividends the past couple of seasons, and he should continue to do this by all means.

What this means, though, is that even with all of these projections, we’re bound to see off-the-board combos at any given point during the season. This observer has merely met Knoblauch before, and cannot read his mind. We should expect the unexpected here and there, and remember that it will pay off in the long run for the Oilers.