Oilers topped up for another dominant decade
There isn’t Stanley Cup fever in Edmonton. There’s Stanley Cup era excitement and expectations.
Yes, the Connor McDavid-captained Oilers are being predicted and projected to the top by The Hockey News Yearbook, the publication that spent a decade correctly envisioning bottomof-the-standings finishes. THN predicts Edmonton to end up in the Stanley Cup final against the back-to-back champion Pittsburgh Penguins.
And yes, the oddsmakers have them up there, too.
Westgate’s Las Vegas odds have Edmonton (9-to-1), second only to Pittsburgh (6-to-1) with Tampa Bay, Washington, Chicago and Minnesota all grouped at 12-to-1 and Nashville, Anaheim, Dallas and Toronto at 14-to-1.
The over/under for points in the overall standings supplied by bodog.com have Anaheim with 106, Pittsburgh with 105 and Edmonton with 104 topping the 31team league.
When it comes to wins, the offshore betting establishment has Anaheim at 47½, Pittsburgh at 47 and Edmonton at 46½.
After equalling the NHL record of 10 straight seasons out of the playoffs, it’s a total flip-flop for a team to be projected to finish around the top, but this is a town that once witnessed the last dynasty, with the Oilers team of Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Grant Fuhr, Paul Coffey, Glenn Anderson and Kevin Lowe, playing in six Stanley Cup finals in eight years and winning five of them.
It’s doubtful if something like that will ever be achieved again in the salary cap era. But to think a team could be in the conversation for a decade is what we’re talking about here.
McDavid, after missing 37 games of his rookie season due to injury, put up a league-leading 100 points last year to win the Art Ross Trophy and also collected Hart Trophy and Ted Lindsay Award honours.
Entering the third year of his NHL career, he’s already achieved status as the greatest in the game not named Sidney Crosby. And he has an eight-year, US$100-million contract extension to prove it.
Then there’s Leon Draisaitl, eighth in NHL scoring with a 29goal, 77-point season plus six more goals and 16 points in the playoffs last year. He has an eight-year, US$68-million deal to be to McDavid what Evgeni Malkin is to Crosby, what Patrick Kane is to Jonathan Toews (or is it the other way around?) or what Messier was to Gretzky.
There’s goaltender Cam Talbot, who won 42 games last year while helping feed twins in the middle of the night, toughness throughout the lineup, both size and speed and a developing defensive corps that quickly could become a match for the very good group down south in Calgary.
That, and about two years’ worth of playoff experience gained in sixand seven-game series last spring in which Edmonton was hosed by officiating, is reason enough to make the top-of-the-tables predictions for the season about to begin.
But the compelling reason to project this hockey team to be up there for a long while is this: Up arrows.
Take an Oilers roster and put an arrow, up, sideways or down beside each player’s name.
The number of up arrows combined with the ages involved is amazing.
Connor McDavid, 20.
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Leon Draisaitl, 21.
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Darnell Nurse, 22.
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Drake Caggiula, 23.
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Anton Slepyshev, 23.
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Jujuhar Khaira, 23.
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Adam Larsson, 24.
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Oscar Klefbom, 24.
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Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, 24.
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Ryan Strome, 24.
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Laurent Brossoit, 24.
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Zack Kassian, 26.
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Cam Talbot, 30.
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And that’s not to mention … Jesse Puljujarvi, 19.
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Kailer Yamamoto, 18.
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Even the sideways arrows for a couple other guys might still be tilting up a tad because of the guys they are playing with and the character they bring to the team.
Milan Lucic, 29.
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Mark Letestu, 32.
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You get the idea. As good as this team looks like it could be for this year, it looks like it can be better the year after that and the year after that and ….
Another Edmonton era is underway.