Will The Edmonton Oilers Finally Get Over The Playoff Hump In 2021-22?
The Edmonton Oilers are now Ken Holland’s team.
Holland was hired by the Oilers in May of 2019 after the team missed the playoffs in back-to-back seasons. The goal for Holland in his first couple of years at the helm was to make the Oilers competitive enough to keep Connor McDavid happy while also cleaning up the mess left by his predecessor, Peter Chiarelli.
The Oilers made the playoffs in 2020 and 2021 but failed to win a round both times. That’s a decent success given how messy things were with Chiarelli, but aspirations are certainly higher when you have two Hart Trophy winners on your roster.
For the first time in his tenure in Edmonton, Holland had lots of cap room to work with this summer and he made some significant changes to the team. The Chiarelli excuse is now gone and the Oilers need to see some success. Simply making the playoffs and bowing out in the first round won’t be enough anymore.
What happened in 2021
The Oilers came into the North Division with aspirations of finishing at the top of the standings, which made sense given they had the best record in 2019-20 of any Canadian team.
After a slow-ish start to the season, the Oilers started to hit their stride when Mike Smith came back from the Long-Term Injured Reserve in early February. The 38-year-old veteran was a rock for the Oilers in net, posting a .923 save percentage over the course of 32 games, the best season of his career in nearly a decade.
The Oilers also got an absolutely eye-popping performance from McDavid in 2021. Over 56 games, McDavid scored an insane 105 points. He was 21 points ahead of the next-highest scorer, teammate Leon Draisaitl, and he was 36 points ahead of the next-highest non-Oiler, Brad Marchand, who had 69 points.
The Oilers cruised through the All-Canadian Division and finished second in the standings with a 35-19-2 record. It seemed inevitable we would see the Oilers take on the Toronto Maple Leafs in the second round in an epic battle for Canadian supremacy, but that didn’t happen.
The Leafs got shocked by the Montreal Canadiens in seven games while the Oilers got swept aside by the Jets in four.
What did they do in the offseason?
Notable Additions: Zach Hyman, Cody Ceci, Duncan Keith, Warren Foegele, Brendan Berlini, Colton Sceviour
Notable Subtractions: Adam Larsson, Dominik Kahun, Alex Chiasson, James Neal, Caleb Jones, Ethan Bear.
As mentioned above, this was Ken Holland’s first offseason with the Oilers in which he had the financial flexibility to do more than just make patchwork additions to the bottom of the team’s roster.
Part of that cap room was spent on keeping a couple of key players around. Impending free agent Ryan Nugent-Hopkins inked an eight-year deal before he could test the open market and top defender Darnell Nurse, who was set to become a free agent in 2022, signed an eight-year extension of his own.
Holland’s big splash in free agency came when he inked Zach Hyman to a seven-year deal to help solidify the team’s top-six forward group. He also signed Cody Ceci to fill in Adam Larsson’s spot on the blueline, as the defensive stalwart was claimed by the Seattle Kraken in the Expansion Draft.
The most controversial move of Holland’s summer came when he traded for 38-year-old Duncan Keith. The Oilers gave Chicago a decent young defender in Caleb Jones and the Blackhawks didn’t retain any of the cash left over the final two seasons of Keith’s deal, which was puzzling given Marc-Andre Fleury was acquired for nothing shortly after winning the Vezina Trophy.
What to expect in 2021-22?
The Oilers will head back to the Pacific Division, which is pretty easily the weakest in the league, in 2021-22.
There are certainly question marks surrounding this team, with goaltending being the most notable thing. The Oilers are again operating with Mike Smith and Mikko Koskinen as their goaltending tandem. While the pair has been good enough to get them into the playoffs in each of the past two seasons, it’s difficult to say if they’ll be able to get the Oilers over the hump.
It wouldn’t be shocking to see Edmonton in the mix to acquire an ace goaltender before the trade deadline.
Keeping the puck out of the net is going to be the challenge for Edmonton, but scoring goals is going to be the strength. Edmonton finished seventh in the league in goals in 2021 thanks largely to a lethal power-play that scored on 27.6 percent of its chances. Adding Hyman to the mix will only make this already-strong offense even better.
The Oilers are good enough to compete with the Vegas Golden Knights for top spot in the Pacific and anything less than a playoff series victory come spring will be a huge failure.
One bold prediction…
Connor McDavid operates around the 1.88 point-per-game pace he had last season and becomes the first player since Mario Lemieux to hit the 150-point plateau.
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