The season is still two months away from opening. We don’t even know who will be in the teams’ starting lineups when the puck drops for them in early October. Having said that, here are five way-too-early predictions for the Edmonton Oilers starting from the net on out to the forwards in 2024-25.
Edmonton Oilers 2024-25 Predictions Starting in the Crease
Stuart Skinner will pause on “outperforming.” Young goalies don’t develop in straight lines, or as the Artificial Intelligence gurus say, with positive linearity. Oilers fans who still rue getting rid of Devyn Dubnyk learned that lesson the hard way. Heck, even veteran goalies develop in crooked lines scribbled on a chart. All the 25-year-old Skinner has done since he came into the league has been outperform expectations. In 2022-23, he was just supposed to back up the newly acquired Jack Campbell and get in ten games or so. Instead, he played 50 games and outplayed Campbell. He played so well that he got serious Calder Trophy consideration for best rookie. In fact, he finished second in voting for the award that year.
The next season, 2023-24, the plan was to split the games roughly equally between Campbell and Skinner. We all know how that turned out. Campbell was sent to the minors permanently after five games. Skinner played 59, and took the Oilers to within one goal of winning the Stanley Cup. This isn’t to say Skinner will necessarily regress. However, he might just “settle” around where he already is for a while, or play to his mean numbers.
On the Blueline and the Oilers’ Injury Luck Can’t Continue to Hold
The Oilers have been blessed by the lack of injuries to defencemen the last two years. Last year, their top six defencemen hardly missed a game.
| # | Player Name | Pos. | GP | G | A | Pts | PIM |
| 2 | Evan Bouchard | D | 81 | 18 | 64 | 82 | 32 |
| 14 | Mattias Ekholm | D | 79 | 11 | 34 | 45 | 47 |
| 25 | Darnell Nurse | D | 81 | 10 | 22 | 32 | 79 |
| 5 | Cody Ceci | D | 79 | 5 | 20 | 25 | 14 |
| 27 | Brett Kulak | D | 82 | 3 | 13 | 16 | 30 |
| 73 | Vincent Desharnais | D | 78 | 1 | 10 | 11 | 54 |
The year before, it was eerily similar. As a note, combined Barrie and Ekholm played 82, were the two players swapped for one another.
| # | Player Name | Pos. | GP | G | A | Pts | PIM |
| 25 | Darnell Nurse | D | 82 | 12 | 31 | 43 | 64 |
| 22 | Tyson Barrie | D | 61 | 10 | 33 | 43 | 26 |
| 2 | Evan Bouchard | D | 82 | 8 | 32 | 40 | 28 |
| 27 | Brett Kulak | D | 82 | 3 | 17 | 20 | 41 |
| 5 | Cody Ceci | D | 80 | 1 | 14 | 15 | 24 |
| 14 | Mattias Ekholm | D | 21 | 4 | 10 | 14 | 4 |
| 86 | Philip Broberg | D | 46 | 1 | 7 | 8 | 2 |
| 73 | Vincent Desharnais | D | 36 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 31 |
Hockey is a physical game. Defence is a rough position. It will be very surprising if the team’s luck with injuries held again this season. This is going to leave opportunity for players like Troy Stecher, Josh Brown, Philip Kemp, and even Max Wanner to step in and get some much needed big league experience. Which brings us to…
Philip Broberg Steps Up
Broberg has been slow-cooked ever since he was drafted eighth overall by the Oilers in 2019. He was either given limited minutes in a seventh-defenceman role with the Oilers or kept down on the farm team. Don’t expect that to repeat again this year. Broberg had a coming out party in the playoffs. All he did was average 15:48 ice time in ten games, getting three points, and finished with 18 blocked shots.
That was after he was dominant on the Oilers’ American Hockey League affiliate Bakersfield Condors. Broberg finished with “boxcar” stats of five goals and 33 assists for 38 points in 49 games. The AHL doesn’t track ice time, but Condors GM Keith Gretzky told Bob Stauffer on popular radio talk show Oilers Now that he played 30 or even 33 minutes some nights. He played at even strength. He played on the power play. Penalty kill? Yes. Starting line-up, end of period, end of game, you name it, all yes.
Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch never coached Broberg in the minors. He wasn’t on the big team when Knoblauch came in. Having never coached him before, Knoblauch wasn’t aware of the Swede’s attributes until he was brought up for the playoffs. He is now. Expect Broberg to be a top four defenceman this year, paired in some combination with Mattias Ekholm, Darnell Nurse or Evan Bouchard. Broberg is not going to put up big offensive totals. He won’t rock anyone with huge hits. Nor will he physically dominate anyone. He will likely receive limited power play time, if any. All he will do, however, is munch minutes against other teams’ elite players.
Up Front and Notes on Leon Draisaitl
The city of Edmonton is feeling some angst this summer as news of a Draisaitl re-signing drags on. This is the last year of his current eight-year contract. His agent has said he wants something done by the end of August. Now that the team has hired Stan Bowman as general manager, that will be his first priority. In a June interview on the popular Oilers Now radio show, NHL insider Frank Seravalli said contract talks had already begun and that Draisaitl’s camp wanted a deal for the full eight-year maximum at around $14 million per season. He wasn’t interested in a short term deal like Auston Matthews penned. Much of this depends on how much of a home town discount he and best friend Connor McDavid are willing to give in order to keep a competitive team around them. Expect it to get done sooner rather than later.
Draisaitl should have a very productive season. First, he will start the season healthy. Second, he will remain a major cog on the Oilers historically productive power play. Finally, he will be playing with linemates with better scoring touches than Evander Kane (44 points), Warren Foegele (41 points) Ryan McLeod (30 points) and Dylan Holloway (nine points). Expect his regular linemates to be Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (67 points) and Viktor Arvidsson (59 points in his last complete season without injury). Draisaitl should match or exceed his previous career high of 128 points.
Dylan Holloway
Holloway should seamlessly replace Warren Foegele in the lineup at a cheaper price. He has Foegele’s speed, his physicality, and will likely put up around 12 goals and 25 points, all at a much cheaper price point. Why such low expectations? First, Holloway lost a bit of his offensive touch after he twice required surgery for hand injuries. Second, he is young, and has more experienced, productive and higher-paid players ahead of him in the lineup. Foegele got to play in the top six frequently last year. With McDavid, Zach Hyman, Jeff Skinner, Nugent-Hopkins, Draisaitl, and Arvidsson ahead of him in the lineup, there won’t be much top six playing time for “Hollywood.”
Conclusion of Our Edmonton Oilers 2024-25 Predictions
The Oilers have a very settled team. Much of the roster and playing time is pretty well locked up. One thing we can expect to see is a bit of a pause and maybe even a bit of a wobble on Skinner’s development, more injuries opening up playing time on the blue line, Broberg finding a regular role, Draisaitl re-signing and threatening his record point totals, and Holloway to effortlessly replace Foegele in the forwards corp.
Can we expect a repeat of going to the Stanley Cup final? The Oilers began a massive Stanley Cup run after losing to the New York Islanders in 1983. They won it all in 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988 and 1990. On the other hand, their 2006 Cup run kickstarted ten straight years of missing the playoffs. Which pattern will this year’s team follow? A lot of it will depend on players like Skinner, Broberg, Draisaitl and Holloway continuing their recent strong play.
Main photo: Jim Rassol-USA TODAY Sports
The post Five Way Too Early 2024-25 Edmonton Oilers Season Predictions appeared first on Last Word On Hockey.