Sorry but this is a much worse world of pain than other bad starts for the Edmonton Oilers

I’m an Oilers optimist, a fan who believes the Oilers can win most games and who has had high hopes every year of the McDavid/Draisaitl era that Edmonton can win the Cup.

But this 2025-26 season is testing me.

We know the Oilers have had slow starts in recent years. Indeed, slow starts have cost two coaches, Dave Tippett and Jay Woodcroft, their jobs, Tippett in the early winter of 2022 after 44 games, and Woodcroft in the fall of 2024 after 13 games.

But at least in those previous seasons, as well as last fall when the Oilers also got off to a poor start, Edmonton had one critical thing in its favour, a positive Grade A shots differential. Unfortunately that key positive indicator no longer is in Edmonton’s favour.

In 2021-22, Edmonton had 49 points in 44 games, for a .560 points percentage when Tippett was canned. The team was scoring 3.2 goals per game and giving up 3.3 goals against. None of that was good enough, but the team did have 14 Grade A shots per game, while giving up 12.7 per game That made for a positive 1.3 Grade A shots per game differential.

That gave hope that the team was better than its record suggested, that there was solid evidence it might soon start to win more, which is exactly what it did, with Edmonton getting 55 points in its last 38 games, good for a 0.720 points percentage. Under Woodcroft in 38 games, the Oilers scored 3.8 goals for and gave up just 2.8 goals against.

It’s Grade A shots numbers were 15 for per game, 12.9 against, a 2.1 differential. That team went on to win two rounds the playoffs.

But this start is different than the poor ones under Tippett in 2021-22, Woodcroft in 2023-24 and Knoblauch last year in 2024-25.

There’s nothing in Edmonton’s process that indicates this is a good team, save for some improved defensive focus and discipline in the past few games.

In its first 27 games this year, Edmonton’s Grade A shots differential is -0.8 per game, 13.3 for, 14.1 against.

This numbers speaks to a mediocre team overall, and an Edmonton Oilers team in decline. It’s got little to do with the goaltending, everything to do with poor defensive play and a lacklustre offence, save on the power play.

In the first 27 games of 2023-24, under both Woodcroft and Knoblauch, the Oilers had a +4 Grade A shots differential, even as the team had just 27 points in 27 games, just like this year’s Oilers team.

In the first 27 games of 2024-25, Edmonton had 32 points and a Grade A shots differential of +3.4, again a strong signal that things were going to turn out well for the squad.

But we can’t say that about this year’s team. This year’s team is struggling, cap-sizing and the Oil are far from righting the ship.

For this reason I’ve been pushing for a major shake-up recently, things like bringing in a new goalie and bringing in multiple new players from Bakersfield, such as Quinn Hutson and Roby Jarventie, while benching forwards like Trent Frederic and Curtis Lazar.

The Oilers are a team in trouble right now, a team in disarray. Perhaps Edmonton can get out of it with a renewed and fanatical focus on defensive play. It’s the only real hope for this current squad as far as I can see, unless you want to put a ton of weight in the notion that the Oilers are simply fatigued after two long runs to the Cup final and a brutal early season schedule.

I put a lot of weight in those factors myself, but that doesn’t mean the Oilers can pull out of their dive.

I’m still hesitant to doubt a team that has now twice overcome poor-to-atrocious starts to make the Stanley Cup Final.

At the same time, the wicked decrease in Grade A shots differential this year, as compared to those two other seasons, is sobering.

At the Cult of Hockey

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