The Edmonton Oilers’ 2025–26 season was definitely unfulfilled, as there will once again be no Cup-raising banner night to open next season.

But there were still silver linings. The first that stands out is Connor McDavid putting up his second-best scoring season with 138 regular-season points, earning a recent Hart Trophy nomination. There were also other positives, including young players taking big steps forward and a feel-good story in net, which we dive into below.

In Vasily Podkolzin’s first year with the Oilers last season, he put up 24 points and was praised for his hard work to get the puck in the hands of Leon Draisaitl, but he went into the 2025–26 campaign with a different mindset.

His skills coach, Ned Lukacevic, indicated that last off-season, they set a goal for the 2025–26 campaign to score “20 and 20,” and boy, was he ever close.

Podkolzin recorded 37 points (19 goals and 18 assists), and I have to say, as the self-anointed president of the Podkolzin fan club, I nailed the exact point total I’d projected for him before the season started.

The 24-year-old finished second on the team in five-on-five goals with 17. He also began to shed the perception that he can only produce with Draisaitl, as Natural Stat Trick shows that among regulars who played in the top-six, Podkolzin had the best goals-for percentage while playing with McDavid at five-on-five, at 66.67 per cent.

Away from the puck, his 242 hits led the Oilers, which was good for 12th-best in the entire NHL, and he was second on the team in shots blocked (52).

He had six fights, with hockeyfights.com showing that he won five of the six, with the one exception being a draw, and the most recent one coming at the end of the game in Game 3 against the Anaheim Ducks, in an effort to try to put the team on his back and rally the group. Moreover, we saw and heard his leadership traits trickle in last November, when, after a fight with Peyton Krebs in defence of his teammates, he said, “No one can play against our leaders like that. The whole team will protect them for sure.”

Podkolzin took a huge step in 2025–26 and has become such a valuable piece to the Oilers. He hits, fights, and scores, and at 24 years old, is starting to carve out a role in the new wave of leadership within this older, aging Oilers core.

When I think back to the 2025–26 season, I’ll remember it as one where Matt Savoie took a huge step forward in his development, finishing the campaign with 37 points (18 goals, 19 assists).

From the get-go, Savoie showed extra attention to defensive details, usually being in the right spots and, more often than not, making the correct, responsible play.

That earned him a role on the Oilers’ penalty-killing unit, where, by season’s end, he played the most PK minutes among forwards (132:13 TOI) in the regular season, scoring a couple of shorthanded goals. Additionally, he was tied for the lead among forwards in takeaways, sharing that lead with McDavid at 32.

Down the stretch, with Draisaitl out of the lineup, his offence heated up as he earned a bump to the first line alongside the captain. In the Oilers’ final 20 games, Savoie finished with the second-most points on the team with 12, which included scoring his first career hat trick in the final game of the regular season.

And as he started to turn a corner offensively later in the season, his underlying metrics at five-on-five since Feb. 1 were all positive, finishing with a 55.96 shots-for percentage (SF%), 61.11 goals-for percentage (GF%), 53.53 expected goals-for percentage (xGF%), 57.32 scoring chances-for percentage (SCF%), and a 56.56 high-danger chances-for percentage (HDCF%).

With the Oilers’ core getting up in age, there’s comfort in knowing they have a young offensive weapon on the wings, and there’s reason to believe Savoie could push into the 55–60-point range next season.

Josh Samanski’s development last season was a big bright spot for the club.

The centreman began the season in the AHL with the Bakersfield Condors, putting up 31 points in 45 games, before being recalled to the Oilers on Jan. 26, and the Erding, Germany native didn’t look back.

He played in five games with the Oilers before heading to Italy to play with Team Germany at the Olympics, where he appeared in five games, tallying one goal and an assist while playing against the best in the world and was stapled to Draisaitl’s wing. Overall, I feel that experience fast-tracked his game at the NHL level.

Samanski’s game improved steadily over the remaining 19 regular-season games, as his underlying metrics were positive, finishing with a 51.95 SF%, 53.74 xGF%, 52.49 SCF%, and a 50% HDCF%. We also saw him get into the mix in scrums, make excellent defensive plays, and his puck-handling skills improved, which led to scoring an incredible goal in Game 2 against the Ducks.

However, it wasn’t all smooth sailing for Samanski, as he took two unnecessary penalties in the playoffs that led to goals against on the ensuing power-play opportunities, but, as most youngsters do, he’ll learn from that.

Overall, it’s been an incredible season for the 24-year-old. He started in the AHL, was recalled to the NHL, played in the Olympics, got his first taste of NHL postseason action, and now he’s headed off to represent Germany again at the World Championships, with all of that experience setting him up to potentially be the Oilers’ bottom-six centreman for years to come.

One of the biggest Oilers stories this past week was Evan Bouchard getting snubbed, not even receiving a Norris Trophy nomination despite leading all NHL defencemen in scoring with 95 points, 14 points more than the next highest blueliner.

I won’t get too deep into the Norris conversation, but I’ll summarize my thoughts by saying the powers that be who left Bouchard off their ballots failed the assignment.

Bouchard had a slow start to the 2025-26 campaign, going pointless in his first six games and posting a -5 plus-minus over that stretch. And with it being the first year of his $10.5 million-a-season contract, after that rough start, I’d be lying if I hadn’t wondered at the time whether the pressure of his big contract was getting to him.

Yet, he turned it around in an incredible way, becoming only the 10th D-man in NHL history to reach 95 points in a season at least once. The pinnacle individually for Bouchard last season came in his six-point effort against the Washington Capitals, where he also became the first Oiler to record a hat trick since Marc-Andre Bergeron did it in 2006.

Of course, Bouchard has his blue-line blunders at times, but as Paul Coffey mentioned in a recent interview, he can afford to make mistakes every once in a while as long as the good outweighs the bad. And with Bouchard, the good almost always outweighs the bad, and as the fourth-highest-paid blue-liner last season, he delivered in a tremendous way.

The 2025–26 season had plenty of storylines, but Connor Ingram’s rise was one of the feel-good tales for the Oilers.

The Saskatoon, SK native played in 22 games for the Utah Mammoth last season before entering the NHL/NHLPA Player Assistance Program in March 2025 and was cleared on Aug. 20. The Oilers acquired him via trade on Oct. 1, and while playing for the Condors in the AHL last season, he went 4-5-2, posting a 4.04 goals-against average (GAA) and an .856 save percentage (SV%).

I can only imagine the uncertainty a netminder must feel in their hockey career when they’re surrendering an average of four goals a game in the AHL, but Ingram caught a break when the Oilers were forced to recall him after Tristan Jarry was injured in December.

He picked up his first win on Dec. 21 in a 4-3 win over the Vegas Golden Knights, and I wrote shortly after it, “The Oilers’ tale in net this season is shaping up to be a very intriguing one, and my gut tells me Ingram’s resilience story with the Oilers is far from over.”

And as it turned out, there were still plenty of chapters left to be written in Ingram’s story for the rest of the season.

He played a total of 32 regular-season games and took over the starting position down the stretch. Also, of the four netminders the Oilers used this season — along with Stuart Skinner, Calvin Pickard, and Jarry — Ingram posted the best numbers, finishing with a 2.60 GAA and a .899 SV%.

Although Ingram’s numbers dipped in the five playoff games against the Ducks, which I believe was mostly the result of the Oilers’ defensive breakdowns and inability to kill off penalties, his best outing came in a 4–1 win in Game 4, where he made 29 of 30 saves.

That said, the netminder came up big down the stretch, posting a .904 SV% in his final 15 regular-season games, and without him stepping up, who knows if the Oilers would’ve even qualified for the playoffs.

Additionally, he was the Oilers’ nominee for the Bill Masterton Trophy last April, an award he previously won back in 2024, while being recognized for his strength in seeking help through the NHL/NHLPA Player Assistance Program after struggles with mental health.

As a whole, Ingram was very candid in his interviews, and one thing that stood out was his overall gratitude for his opportunity with the Oilers in 2025–26, saying last December:

The Oilers season didn’t end the way they had hoped, but Ingram’s tale of resilience pulled on the heartstrings, and as a pending unrestricted free agent, if the numbers work, they should 100 per cent bring the netminder back into the fold next season and beyond.