The Oilers fans, Oilers media, and Oilers brass all say the right things at the beginning of the season. Connor McDavid started team skates before training camp with the belief that a good start, and therefore a good regular season, will set the tone in pursuit of an elusive Stanley Cup.

Maybe this will be the year they’re an elite regular-season team!

Not the case. But again, the chalice is the ultimate goal.

So, what then makes this mid-season crisis feel different? How little of the elite play we’ve seen, for starters, and how glaring the flaws and imperfections look.

The lack of a three-game win streak until this recent homestand, followed by their first three-game regulation losing streak, might make you think this team is streaky.

But this season hasn’t even featured the usual streaks. Instead, they are replaced by glimmers.

Some blowout wins in November and December. Some big comeback wins in January. But these moments are fleeting, and they’re paying bills they can’t cash.

Connor McDavid leads the NHL in points with 96. Leon Draisaitl is fifth in points with 80. Evan Bouchard leads all defencemen with 63. The Oilers’ power play is first at 31.4 per cent.

Yet, the Oilers are eighth in the Western Conference in points percentage with a 28-22-8 record. They’ve lost more games than they’ve won. Most nights, they’re looking for an easy game.

There’s been a sentiment that the Oilers can flip the switch when they like, that they can keep getting away with it, so to speak. Besides, what good is the regular season really? The success they need is in June. They’ve done this before, and they can do it again. Onlookers have seen it done.

All of this means we’re confronted with this issue: Do we believe our eyes? Do we believe what the team is telling us through 58 games?

Or, do we just trust that this team just goofs through the regular season? The issues are overblown, and when the chips are down, they’ll dial in.

This time, I’m suspicious.

‘We’re not the same team’

The most relevant piece of the Leon Draisaitl post-game presser wasn’t about who’s to blame or anything like that.

Caught in the two minutes of unfiltered response, Draisaitl said, “We’re a different team. We’re not the same team.”

This is the point.

At this moment, it doesn’t matter that the Oilers have gone to back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals after tumultuous seasons in both. Those were different teams.

Sure, the core remains the same, but those important depth pieces that knew their roles are not.

Corey Perry, Brett Kulak, Evander Kane, Connor Brown, John Klingberg, and on and on, are not on the roster.

This team carries no Stanley Cup champion on it, no been-there-done-that guy. The bottom-six’s goal share is dangerously low, like all-time Washington Capitals 1974-75 low. They have no form of agitation or gamesmanship.

The team identity? Not sure.

For an offensive team, they don’t attack middle ice. For a good puck-moving team, they often struggle on their first pass, and even more so now that they look doggedly for a stretch pass.

Former Oiler Derek Ryan cautioned his position of seeing Edmonton as a contender, as the role players lack, well, a role.

Arrows are flying at Kris Knoblauch’s head. Some are deserved. Some pieces are just flat missing.

The assets

This explanation is an oversimplification. There’s much more to be said about this team’s asset management since the summer. The Andrew Mangiapane experiment hasn’t worked, and Knoblauch doesn’t want it to work.

Trent Frederic is a five-alarm fire of asset management, but despite not scoring in 32 games, he is at least doing something, sometimes, occasionally on the Oilers’ fourth line.

Tristan Jarry is twice as expensive and just as good as Stuart Skinner, and came at a cost of other tradable assets.

These are known issues. But there are tweaks and internal solutions available.

Two to three more shifts again for a third-line centred by Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is an easy fix. Not scratching Curtis Lazar or Trent Frederic as they gain chemistry together is another. The fewer minutes for Mattias Janmark, the better.

At the very least, resisting the temptation to load up Draisaitl-McDavid-Hyman at the slightest inconvenience every damn time isn’t a strategy that engages the entire team.

With a team like this, the regular season could be just one long workout of different ideas and combinations, a ramp-up to the postseason. But that’s not how it’s been approached.

Turning it off and on again

This is a great time for a reset, for the players and the fans alike. The Oilers have been an exhausting exercise, playing 58 games in 119 days, almost a game every other night.

After 107 games in 2023-24 and 104 games in 2024-25, this is a ton of hockey. Now Batman and Robin are set to ramp up for the Olympics for a few high-intensity with the highest stakes.

I don’t expect Kris Knoblauch to be fired. But he must reflect, a word Bob Stauffer used several times on Oilers Now on Wednesday.

Stauffer was doing that thing he does occasionally, speaking in riddles in response to the Draisaitl comments.

He noted how Mark Stuart is doing two jobs behind the bench: the penalty kill and running the blueline. Last year’s bench had Paul Coffey and Glen Gulutzan. That’s a ton of experience absent.

“Sometimes when players of his ilk make those comments, it provides clarity for everybody else out there. So on that note, what I’m saying is that opportunity knocks. Seize the day. I think you know what I mean,” said Stauffer.

Not really, Stauff. But it leads me to think they’ll be adding another assistant coach to the bench. Whether that’s Coffey or not, who left under his own volition, I don’t know.

The uniqueness of playing mediocre since Christmas is that they’re still in earshot of the Pacific Division lead.

An opportunity is knocking. If not, there’s a good chance this team continues to flounder, and fans will have to bank on the Oilers’ rope-a-doping their way to success in April.

Michael Menzies is an Oilersnation columnist and has been the play-by-play voice of the Bonnyville Pontiacs in the AJHL since 2019. With seven years news experience as the Editor-at-Large of Lakeland Connect in Bonnyville, he also collects vinyl, books, and stomach issues.

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