The Edmonton Oilers will look to keep their faint hope of winning the Pacific Division alive on Tuesday when they face the Golden Knights in Vegas. The visiting team will have an uphill climb, as the Oilers are without Connor McDavid, Mattias Ekholm, and Stuart Skinner at the beginning of this four-game road trip.
1. The Golden Knights lead the Pacific Division with 98 points, the Los Angeles Kings are in second with 91 points, and the Oilers are in third with 89. All three of the teams also have nine games remaining on their schedules.
Vegas capitalized on Edmonton stumbling through some key injuries to extend their lead over the Oilers in the standings. Since McDavid went down with an injury in an overtime loss to the Winnipeg Jets, the Oilers have gone 2-2-0. During that same period of time, the Golden Knights went 5-0-0 and are now on a six-game winning streak.
2. It’s mathematically possible for the Oilers or Kings to jump the Golden Knights in the next couple of weeks, but the more relevant race here is the one for home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs between Edmonton and Los Angeles.
This spring will mark the fourth consecutive time that the Oilers and Kings meet in the first round of the playoffs. The Oilers have been the home team all three times and the series has been getting shorter every year, with Edmonton winning in seven games in 2022, six games in 2023, and five games in 2024.
Could that change this year? The Kings have been arguably the NHL’s best home team this season with a 27-4-4 record playing at Crypto dot com Arena. Beating L.A. on the road would be a challenge for Edmonton, but getting healthy late in the season is more important than hosting Game 7.
3. The Winnipeg Jets are leading the Western Conference with 106 points and the Dallas Stars are close behind them with 102 points. The Golden Knights have 98 points and appear to be locked into facing the better of the two Wild Card teams in the first round of the playoffs.
It looks like two Central Division teams are going to grab both of the Wild Card positions, though the Calgary Flames and Vancouver Canucks both remain in the race. The Minnesota Wild are in the first Wild Card spot with 88 points and the St. Louis Blues are right behind them with 87 points thanks to a nine-game winning streak. The Flames are five points back with two games in hand and the Canucks are six points out with one game in hand.
If the Blues keep winning, it’ll set up a first-round meeting with the Golden Knights which puts St. Louis in the Pacific Division playoff bracket. Imagine a second-round playoff series where Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg face the team that opted not to match their offer sheets?
4. Assuming the Golden Knights hold on to their spot in the standings, it’ll be the fifth time they’ve won the Pacific Division in eight seasons since entering the NHL in 2017-18.
The Canucks won the Pacific Division in 2023-24 and the Flames won in 2021-22 and 2018-19. The Anaheim Ducks most recently finished first in the division in 2016-17 and the San Jose Sharks last did so in 2010-11.
Both Edmonton and Los Angeles are on extended division title droughts dating back to their days in the Smythe Division. The Kings won it in 1990-91 and it’s their only division banner in team history. The Oilers won the division six consecutive times from 1981-82 to 1986-87 and haven’t done so since.
5. The Golden Knights can set a new franchise record for points in a season if they keep winning down the stretch. They have 98 points with nine games remaining in the regular season, 13 points back of the 111 points they had two years ago.
Vegas has finished with over 100 points twice in team history. They did so in their first season in the league in 2017-18 and they wound up losing in the Stanley Cup Final. The other time was in 2022-23 and the Golden Knights won their first Stanley Cup. Maybe we don’t even have to worry about the Blues.
6. Jack Eichel is leading the Golden Knights with 93 points in 72 games, which is a career-high and climbing for the second-overall pick from the 2015 draft. Tomas Hertl had a slow start to his career with Vegas after being acquired from the Sharks last year but he’s settled in this season and leads the Golden Knights with 31 goals.
Starting goaltender Adin Hill has a 29-11-5 record along with a .908 save percentage in 45 starts this season for the Golden Knights while backup Ilya Samsonov has gone 16-9-3 in 28 games with a .892 save percentage.