IS OILERS’ LONG-TERM MISERY OVER AT LAST?

Since the end of the National Hockey League’s regular season in mid-April, the team with the best record — considering they haven’t played a game — must be the Edmonton Oilers.

The Anaheim Ducks, with a 9-1 playoff record heading into Game 2 of the Western Conference final, might argue about that.

But really, who’s made more seismic headlines, than the bottom-feeding Alberta Capital-ists whose quarter century of almost unrelieved misery, the price the hockey gods exacted for their 1980s dynasty, looks as though it may be over at last?

Consider what the last five weeks have wrought: Hockey Canada’s crafty former CEO Bob Nicholson elevated to the top of the Oilers’ executive ranks; the draft lottery win that will net phenom Connor McDavid; Peter Chiarelli, respected architect of the Boston Bruins’ 2011 Stanley Cup win, hired as general manager; and Tuesday, the latest piece of the puzzle, the signing of Todd McLellan to coach this young, but still scattered, collection of child stars and underachievers.

McLellan might have been only the second-most coveted coach on the free agent market behind Detroit’s Mike Babcock — who is expected to announce his destination on Wednesday — but he was the Oilers’ No. 1 choice, and a five-year deal will ensure he has enough rope to impose his structure on a team badly in need of a better one.

“He’s the guy that we wanted, and I wanted to get on it, get on it in a hurry,” Chiarelli said, in introducing the former San Jose Sharks mentor to the Edmonton media.

So they talked it over at the world championships in Prague and each liked what the other had to say, and it only remained to sign the contract.

While overseas, McLellan said he made a point of talking to Crosby about what it was like to come into the NHL as an 18-year-old generational talent, what helped, what hurt ... all in preparation for McDavid’s arrival. Smart.

Hard to say what this means for Babcock. It didn’t really narrow his field because Edmonton never seemed very serious about him, and he never seemed very serious about Toronto, which would have required a lot bigger ego than even his own to tackle.

You’d have said the same about Buffalo, but signs seem to be pointing that way. Either Babcock accepts what sounds like a gargantuan multi-year deal with the Sabres — one that potentially rewrites the parameters of NHL coaching salaries — or he takes the Buffalo offer back to the Red Wings and says: “How about it?”

Evidently, San Jose and St. Louis are out.

Given that Ken Hitchcock is still twisting in the wind in St. Louis, and that he was on Babcock’s staff for both Olympic victories in 2010 and 2014, taking over the Blues before Hitch’s body was even cold would be awkward, to say the least.

But it might have been a better option than McLellan’s old job in San Jose, where the Joe Thornton-Patrick Marleau bottleneck appears immovable.

How Babcock would do in Buffalo with a team that just tanked a season only to miss out on its reason for tanking is a topic for another day, but let’s just say he wouldn’t be leaving Detroit to improve on the weather. The Sabres’ problems might not be half as intractable as Toronto’s, but the coach could forget about winning championships for a while, even with Jack Eichel on the way.

Meanwhile, back in Edmonton, there is no reason now that the Oilers can’t be great again under McLellan, who apprenticed in Detroit under Babcock before taking the head post in San Jose, and actually had 15 more wins in his seven years in California than Babcock had in Detroit over that same stretch, though without a glittering post-season resume.

“We ended up losing to some very good teams, Chicago, Los Angeles, teams that went on to win the Stanley Cup,” McLellan said. “Sometimes you get beat by a better team, it’s as simple as that.”

The combination of Chiarelli and McLellan — just isolating on those two newcomers with “no preconceived ideas; everybody gets a fresh start,” McLellan said — completely changes the franchise’s expectations of winning.

In the seven seasons that both McLellan was coaching the Sharks and Chiarelli was managing in Boston, their teams went a combined 621-326-133 for a .637 points percentage, with almost identical records (McLellan 311-163-66, Chiarelli 310-163-67). Each missed the playoffs just once in that span, and got fired for it, which is why they were available.

Their teams played in a combined 26 playoff series.

The Oilers in those seven years: 194-277-69, .423, never once made the playoffs.

That’s a lot of pain, and McLellan isn’t saying there won’t be more before the rewards start to flow, but he’s pretty sure of which way the franchise is pointed.

“Up,” he said. Where else is there?