With Christmas and New Year’s Eve behind us, I wanted to welcome everyone to 2025 with a short post to wish everyone a very Happy New Year. Whether you were at Rogers Place for the game or home with your friends, family, or animals, I hope that whatever you did to ring in the new year was filled with happiness, friendship, and time spent doing what makes you happy. I also hope that whatever you got up to last night didn’t hand you a hangover that keeps you in bed or on the couch for the foreseeable future.
As I sat down to write this year’s New Year post, what sticks out most is that the last 12 months were a hell of a ride. We watched the Oilers take us on a ride up to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. We watched Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, and the whole gang get the furthest into the playoffs in the history of this website. We watched Kris Knoblauch settle into the Oilers’ head coaching gig with grace, poise, and plenty of success as a rookie. Closer to home, we said goodbye to our friend Robin Brownlee in January after he passed shortly after last year’s New Year post. The highs were high, and the lows were low, but no matter where the rollercoaster took us during the year, we were all riding the waves together, which always makes me feel grateful.
For Oilers fans, 2024 was a winding road that was as bumpy as it was exhilarating, and I can’t help but wonder what these next 12 months will have in store for us. Will this team finally hoist the Stanley Cup? Will the aliens attack? Will Connor McDavid’s superhuman abilities literally blow our brains through the back of our skull? Who will SIUTBOHC? As is the case any time we flip into a new year, the Oilers have given us a lengthy list of questions to be answered as they look to fight their way back to the Stanley Cup Final for the second straight season.
Even as we wait to learn what the future holds, I’m pumped that we still get to navigate those waters together. We wouldn’t get to do this for a living if it weren’t for the fantastic community surrounding this website, and that’s why I wanted to wrap up the article with some New Year’s resolutions for the Edmonton Oilers in the hopes of manifesting glory over the next 12 months. As always, if you have any resolutions or ideas I’ve missed, I would love to read about them in the comments section below.
Happy New Year, Nation.

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS

New Years Eve
  • You will refrain from treating the best players on this team as whipping boys when something goes wrong. If you’re paying attention, you already know they’re often the ones keeping us entertained when no one else can get the job done. We must never blame the captains of the ship if there are jokers wasting time and money along the way.
  • Connor McDavid will sign a max term extension with the Oilers, and we will rejoice in celebration like it’s NYE in 1999.
  • You will allow yourself to enjoy Darnell Nurse regardless of how much money he makes, especially when he’s playing what I’d argue is the best hockey of his career.
  • Speaking of contracts, you will not blow a gasket when Evan Bouchard’s contract extension comes out.
  • You will not surprised when Stan Bowman — much like those who came before hime — doesn’t make the trade you think he should.
  • It’s okay to be critical of players, and then admit you were wrong later. It’s freeing. You can do this.
  • You will remember that not every player on every other roster is better than what we already have here. We all know Oilers fans have a tendency to covet players because they used to be good at some point. We have a rich heritage in it.
  • You will not spend so much energy stressing about line combinations, not because you’re wrong in your assessment of where guys should be playing, but because no one at the Oilers cares to ask for our opinion.
  • You will continue to complain about the price of beers at Rogers Place, but you will continue to pay for them anyway.