Edmonton Oilers Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, left, and Connor McDavid celebrate a goal against the Philadelphia Flyers at Rogers Place in Edmonton, on June 2.Perry Nelson/Reuters
A dozen games into the season, the Oilers were 2-9-1 and looked anything like a contender for the Stanley Cup. It cost their coach, Jay Woodcroft, his job and left prognosticators puzzled.
“There were many nights where I went home thinking we hadn’t played that bad but found a way to lose,” Ken Holland, the team’s general manager, said this week. “I have been around the NHL a long time and didn’t think it could continue for 70 more games, but the question was how long was it going to take to turn things around.
“I was concerned we would dig ourselves a hole too deep to get out of. There were a lot of nervous people.”
Kris Knoblauch, then the coach of the New York Rangers’ AHL affiliate in Hartford, was hired to replace Woodcroft on Nov. 12. On the same day, Paul Coffey, Edmonton’s Hall of Fame defenceman, was appointed his assistant.
Edmonton has gone 17-6 since then and at 19-15-1 has its best record after 35 games in three years. It enters the weekend two points out of a playoff position with four games in hand over Seattle, which currently holds the second wild card in the Western Conference. Edmonton has crept to within seven points of the Los Angeles Kings, who are third in the Pacific Division.
“I don’t know why, but historically our team has played at a much higher level in the second half of the season than the first,” Holland said. “For a while there we looked like a deer in the headlights, really not sure what was going on.
“You wake up 13 games into the season and are looking at a lottery pick and not sure you can put something together good enough to make a difference.”
The Oilers have the best record in the league – 14-3 – over the past 17 games. They had one eight-game winning streak and have six successive victories ahead of a skirmish with the Ottawa Senators on Saturday night at Rogers Place.
“We have our confidence back,” Holland said. “We go into games feeling we have a good chance to win. With 47 games to go we got ourselves back in the picture. We control our own fate.”
Edmonton has mostly rallied behind three players: Connor McDavid, Stuart Skinner and Zach Hyman.
McDavid, who battled an undisclosed injury early on, has risen from 131st in scoring to a tie for third over 22 games. Since Nov. 20, Skinner is second among NHL goaltenders with 11 wins and has a .914 save percentage. Hyman has 18 goals in the past 22 outings and leads Edmonton with 22 overall.
The 31-year-old winger never scored more than 21 in six seasons with the Maple Leafs but is on a pace for 50 right now.
“He has developed into one of our most important guys on and off the ice,” Holland said. “He is as good as anyone in the league when it comes to protecting the puck and he goes to the blue paint. Those were two things we needed when we signed him.”
Hyman signed a seven-year, US$38.5-million contract with the Oilers in the summer of 2021. Although critics question the terms, its annual value of US$5.5-million is a bargain at present.
Hyman plays on the first line with McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. He had a breakthrough campaign in 2022-23 when he netted 36 goals and became a point-a-game player for the first time in his career. In 2021-22, his first season with Edmonton, he posted career bests with 27 goals and 54 points.
“My first year here was a little different than anything I ever experienced,” Hyman said during a phone interview on Thursday. “It took a while to adjust to a new team. But since then I have gotten better at making adjustments and reading certain situations. I am continuing to learn.”
Hyman counts McDavid as a close friend and trained with him in Toronto this summer. He was credited with the assist on Tuesday when McDavid reached 900 points in a triumph over the Philadelphia Flyers.
He chuckled when asked what it is like to line up beside the sport’s greatest player.
“I’m not star-struck in any manner,” he said. “He is just another guy to me but a guy with the ability to do things other players can’t.”
Hyman, who grew up in Toronto, attended Jewish schools and is troubled by a rise in antisemitism since Hamas launched an attack on Israel on Oct. 7. His grandparents were Holocaust survivors. He said he has not been targeted because of his heritage since he joined the NHL but had some issues when he was young.
“Kids say silly things,” Hyman said. “I would deal with it, whether it was to confront someone directly or to bite my tongue. My parents taught me at an early age that there were some people who weren’t as tolerant as others. I had a good sense of awareness about what was and what wasn’t okay.”
Hyman is happy in Edmonton, where he lives with his wife Alannah Mozes and their sons, Theo, who is 3, and Bennett, now 18 months.
At their worst, the Oilers were tied for last in the league with the San Jose Sharks. Now they are bearing down on the leaders and closing in on their fifth consecutive year in the playoffs. In 2022 they lost in the conference final to the Avalanche and a year ago they were eliminated by the Golden Knights in the second round.
Both went on to win Stanley Cups.
“Our season started off pretty shaky but we were always confident as a team,” Hyman said. “There was not a sense of panic; it was more a sense of urgency. We knew we had to stop the bleeding.”
Done.