WWYDW(SE): Giving Thanks

The Oilers have had a better start to the 2019-20 season than anybody imagined. Many of us were cautiously optimistic heading into the season, but this 5-0 start wasn’t on anybody’s radar.

As you’ve surely heard by now, this five-game winning streak to start the season is the best by an Oilers team since 1985-86. That team The five-game winning streak is also longer than any winning streak the team had in 2018-19. The Oilers had a couple of four-game winning streaks last season, but they never hit five wins in a row.

The team is showing a tremendous amount of resilience, which isn’t something we’ve seen in the past couple of seasons. The Oilers fell behind in all five of their games but managed to claw back and earn wins. The top players are producing, the defence has been solid, and the special teams have been excellent. There’s quite a bit to like about the team we’ve seen thus far.

Since things are going so well right now, I figured we could keep it positive this weekend. Rather than dissecting line combinations and who should play with who and this and that, let’s lean into the good times. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I want this What Would You Do Wednesday SUNDAY EDITION to be about giving thanks. What Oilers-related thing are you thankful for this year?

I’m thankful for Ken Holland. Since taking over back in the spring, there’s been a sense of calmness and stability within the organization we haven’t felt in forever. Holland came into a difficult situation and didn’t try to fix it overnight, but still managed to plug the roster up with solid depth players to give the team a chance to be competitive during this re-tool stage.

He also went ahead and executed the best trade by an Edmonton Oilers general manager I’ve seen probably since Kevin Lowe’s incredible 2005-06 sequence. Convincing Brad Treliving to send James Neal to Edmonton in exchange for Milan Lucic is absolute madness. It’s been months and I still can’t believe that happened.

Thank you, Ken Holland. I appreciate you.