On its surface, the idea of the Edmonton Oilers being a team that struggles to score is a laughable one.
They have perennial 100-point man Connor McDavid. One of the best goal scorers in the league in Leon Drasiatil. A premier offensive defenceman in Evan Bouchard. A jack-of-all-trades Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who at his peak a few years ago put up 100 points of his own.
But through five games of the 2025-26 NHL season, the Oilers just can’t seem to score enough goals. An issue, as they scored just two each against the New York Rangers and New York Islanders — while they managed to score three in Saturday’s 5-3 loss to the New Jersey Devils, two came in garbage time.
“Our whole team’s just a little bit out of sync, you know,” said Oilers captain Connor McDavid, who has yet to tickle twine. “Not a lot of flow to our game — not connected enough, even on the power play, but even at five-on-five.
“These two points still count, and we talk about getting off to a good start, and we want to get off to a good start, so these games matter, and it’s important. We didn’t find a way to win or get better today, so maybe the second part’s a little more important than the first results matter, but I didn’t like that we didn’t seem to get any better today.
The Oilers have one of the league’s worst offences so far this year, scoring 13 goals through five games in all situations, ranking 26th in the league ahead of Saturday night’s games kicking off. Six of them have come at five-on-five, 30th overall, and just three on the power play, ranking 18th. It’s not for lack of trying, as the team has accumulated 17.86 expected goals on the year, according to Natural Stat Trick, meaning they’ve scored 4.86 goals under expected — the fourth fewest in the league.
What doesn’t help their lack of offence is the sloppy, careless play they’ve displayed on this road trip, allowing the Rangers to hang around in the game, the Islanders to take charge, and the Devils to run away with it.
Simplifying their game and having a quick turnaround to Sunday’s game against the Detroit Red Wings is something McDavid, Adam Henrique, and head coach Kris Knoblauch said would be key.
“When you’re scoring goals, you’re firing on all cylinders,” said McDavid. “You can afford a mistake here and there, and obviously, we can’t afford many mistakes right now with the way we’re going offensively. So we got to find a way to clean up the mistakes first and get ourselves going offensively.
“Everybody can do things a little bit easier, more predictable for each other, get more pucks than that, get more bodies to the net. You know, all the cliches are cliches because they work.”
And with an ability to put things behind them quickly, Knoblauch hopes to see them play with more urgency.
“We have to just speed our game up a little bit more and the faster you can play, the more you’re putting them on their heels and that’s where you force them to make mistakes,” said Knoblauch. “This team has always been able to put things behind themselves… and the amount of games these guys have been played in, high pressure games regular season, it’s not that they’re going to dwell on this too long.”
The Oilers will surely need to lean on those cliches Sunday afternoon, as their turnaround to visit the Red Wings at 1:00 pm MT Sunday afternoon will be swift.
A jam-packed schedule will continue next week as they close out the five-game road trip Tuesday to visit the Ottawa Senators, before hosting the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday night.
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