Four possible reasons the Edmonton Oilers are stuck in the mud

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Here we go again.

After all of the lessons they were supposed to have learned last season and all of the poise and experience they gained in the playoffs, a win over Pittsburgh Friday would leave the Edmonton Oilers exactly where they were after eight games of the 2023 October Crisis.

Just 2-5-1, with more questions than answers.

They rank at or near the bottom in all of the major statistical categories — offence, defence, power play, penalty kill and save percentage — and the only two teams they’ve beaten this season have a combined record of 2-9-1.

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So, yes, fears that this year’s start will be as bad as last year’s start are being realized 60 bewildering minutes at a time.

“I don’t think we’re concerned,” said Oilers winger Mattis Janmark, always an honest voice in these matters. “We should have a better record, for sure, but you have to go about it the right way.

“Last year we had to go from scratch pretty much (after a 2-9-1 start) and the end result was we played a solid, team game. Right now we’re not doing that. We can’t skip any parts, you start with the defence and get better by finishing our chances.”

The record isn’t a big deal yet. Nobody is worried about 2-4-1 with 75 games to go. The Oilers have earned to the right to say ‘Relax, we’ll be fine.’

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But we are once again approaching a point in time where we should start to worry. Just because the Oilers overcame it last year doesn’t mean they would be able to do it again.

The NHL graveyard is littered with teams that made it to the Stanley Cup Final one year and faded badly the next.

It took an eight-game winning streak followed by the second-longest winning streak in NHL history (16 games) to get the Oilers back in the mix and they still finished fifth in the Western Conference and opened three of their four playoff series on the road.

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So a slow start isn’t nothing.

What’s wrong this time? We’re looking at four possible reasons:

Option One: It’s all mental

The Oilers still have last spring ringing in their ears and this is the understandable hangover.

After that epic Stanley Cup playoff run, the first few games of this season must seem like a letdown. It’s hard to find the same intensity in Game 5 of the regular season that you had in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. It’s like going for a ride in a Formula 1 race car and then pretending to be excited about the Uber ride home.

They learned firsthand how long and how hard the road is to the Stanley Cup Final and understand that when the playoffs begin, what they did in October will long be forgotten.

When things look really bleak and the adrenaline kicks in, they’ll answer the call. This is simply how this team is wired. I’ve made the Incredible Hulk analogy many times — they don’t get serious until they get slapped around a little bit and then they’re as good as there is in the league.

Option Two: Chemistry set

It’s going to take a while for all of the off-season moves to settle in. Changing six skaters in one offseason is kind of unusual given that the team was two goals away from a Stanley Cup. And it’s not insignificant.

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The second line of Draisaitl, Viktor Arvidsson, and Jeff Skinner isn’t anything close to what the Oilers were hoping for, if not expecting when they signed the two free agent wingers. But there is too much talent there to stay dry for long. They’ll come around.

The new roles and responsibilities on the penalty kill haven’t sunk in yet, either. And nobody thought that changing three of their seven defencemen wasn’t going to result in some early hiccups.

These are natural growing pains and it’s just going to take a little time before everyone gets comfortable on their new team or in their new roles.

Option Three: Glitch in the Matrix

The best power play in the world is operating at 10 per cent?

Zach Hyman, a guy who scored 70 goals last year, has zero points in seven games?

Perennial impact player Leon Draisaitl is barely noticeable out there, even on a line with Connor McDavid?

McDavid is barely a point-per-game player right now?

Evan Bouchard is lost offensively?

Seriously?

These are guys you can set your watch by. Nobody in hockey thinks that these slumps are going to last. This is just a weird vortex that seems to have swallowed up Edmonton’s best players. They’ll bust out of it right away and everything will be back to normal.

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Option Four: Uh, oh!

They screwed this thing up. Some of this was forced upon the Oilers with offer sheets and salary cap considerations, but that doesn’t change the fact that changing this many players on a Western Conference Champion is risky.

They let too much team speed (Dylan Holloway, Warren Foegele, Ryan McLeod, and Philip Broberg) get away. They let too many key ingredients (Vincent Desharnais, Cody Ceci, McLeod, and Foegele) from the league’s best post-season penalty kill get away.

They downgraded their defence in three of six positions and they got too old and too slow, and it’s going to take a lot of work to fix this before the playoffs.

Which option is it? Or is it some combination of all four? Time will tell.

The Oilers, meanwhile, have no choice but to believe they will get this thing sorted out sooner rather than later.

“I am completely confident in our group,” said defenceman Mattias Ekholm. “It’s early in the year, it’s a matter of working through it. I wasn’t expecting everybody to be firing where we left off (last year). It was going to take a bit of time. I do like our team and I think we’re on the right track.”

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