The Oilers’ offseason is barely underway, and I already have plenty to yell about. Between Evan Bouchard’s Norris snub, Connor McDavid’s Hart case, and a summer that could be built around trades, there’s no shortage of nonsense to talk about. So let’s dump out the random thoughts rolling around in my brain and enjoy the delicious contents together.

Evan Bouchard not being named a Norris Trophy finalist is the kind of thing that makes me wonder how many voters are actually watching the games versus how many are building their ballots from mistakes that rip around on Twitter. Because if we’re talking about the actual season, Bouchard had a better statistical year than all three of Cale Makar, Zach Werenski, and Rasmus Dahlin, finishing with 21 goals and 95 points in 82 games while leading all NHL defencemen by a mile. Bouch had 14 more points than Werenski, who finished second among d-men, and was a major driver in how the Oilers even made the playoffs in the first place. Columbus didn’t. Yet it’s one of those things that used to matter years ago that doesn’t anymore… apparently. Is Dad the perfect defenceman? No. But there’s little doubt that he’s elite at what he does, and I think he should have been recognized for the things he does way better than everyone else. He produces offence at a ridiculous level, drives play, moves the puck, runs the power play, and spends a ton of his night tilted toward the fun end of the rink.

And listen, I’m not pretending Bouchard is Bobby Orr here or anything. The mistakes he makes are often glaring, and when they do happen, they tend to stick out because of the way he plays and how much he has the puck. But for anyone who wants to clutch their pearls about the defensive side of his game, his +26 rating was excellent, which reminds me of Erik Karlsson winning the Norris with a minus-26 rating and 101 points with the Sharks in 2022-23. Love how those goalposts keep moving. Watching these playoffs, I’ve seen costly errors from Dahlin and Makar that ended up in the back of the net, but they don’t seem to get held against them the same way. Do those mistakes not trend on socials? That’s the frustrating part. Bouchard’s giveaways become the focal point on his entire game, while everyone else seems to get the benefit of being a high-end defenceman who occasionally makes a bad play. I know Bouchard is going to get Norris votes, but I’m very interested to see the ballots when they come out. Specifically, I want to see who didn’t even have him listed at all, because it would just harden my belief that some of these guys don’t watch Oilers games at all.

I’m going to say something very controversial: Connor McDavid will win the Hart Trophy. Not only does he deserve his fourth because he was, once again, the best player in the NHL, but he was also the reason the Oilers kept finding ways to survive when the season was going sideways. His 48 goals, 90 assists and 138 points not only led the NHL but were also incredibly important for keeping his defensively challenged team afloat. As impressive as his point totals always are, the bigger story is what he meant to this team when everything around was a dumpster fire charging toward the river. With Leon Draisaitl and Zach Hyman missing time down the stretch, and with the Oilers spending way too much of the season treating defensive play like an optional side quest, McDavid dragged this group toward the postseason like the Game Genie freak he is. How many times did we watch him turn a bad night into a win, a defensive mess into a highlight, or a game that felt like it was slipping away into two points? He’s the MVP, and it’s not even close.

And listen, I’m not even taking a shot at Nathan MacKinnon or Nikita Kucherov because those guys are spectacular hockey players, and I’m not trying to suggest otherwise. Both of them had great years. But if we’re talking about the player who was most valuable to his team, then I don’t know how Connor McDavid hasn’t already been given the trophy. The Avalanche and Lightning had their problems, sure, but neither of those clubs dealt with the rollercoaster that was the Edmonton Oilers. McDavid had to spend way too much of this season outscoring Edmonton’s mistakes, playing huge minutes, and reminding everyone that having the best player on earth is still the greatest cheat code in hockey. The Oilers needed McDavid to be brilliant, and he was. They needed him to put up points almost every night, and he did. If the Hart Trophy is supposed to go to the player who meant the most to his hockey club, then I don’t know how No. 97’s name isn’t already written on it. He was the Oilers’ MVP. He was the league MVP. Give the man his trophy.

Jeff Marek was on Off The Roster this week, and while I always love a good TNN property plug, the part of the conversation that stood out to me was his point that this could end up being a busy summer for trades. With a very shallow free agent class set to kick off on July 1st, teams looking for real upgrades may have to go the trade route instead. Which obviously leads me back to the Oilers and the (metaphorical) life-or-death need for Stan Bowman to make some magic happen. We all saw the post-season interviews, and I can’t think of a team with more pressure to get things right than Edmonton. On the free agent side, I’m thinking that a shallow UFA pool is actually a blessing, because it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that free agency hasn’t exactly been Edmonton’s strong suit over the last few years. The Oilers blew so much money on players they later had to sit out, move out, or simply pray would age better than the contract looks to be at the start. So if the market forces Bowman away from handing out on July 1st, maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world.

When it comes to trades, Edmonton has roughly $16 million in cap space for next season, a handful of draft picks over the next few years, and a prospect list that could give them some options if there’s a deal to be made. Is it the deepest asset pool in the league? No, sir. Are the Oilers loaded with premium draft capital? Also no. But they do have a handful of pieces that could be involved in conversations, and that matters if this really becomes the Summer of Trades as Marek predicts. I’m not going to sit here and start figuring out which prospects should be shipped out or invent trade scenarios just to fill space, but it is interesting that the Oilers probably won’t be able to look at the market to solve their problems. If the mission is to upgrade this hockey team and the players available leave plenty to be desired, the only real option is making deals. The problem, of course, is that there are plenty of us who don’t even know if Stan Bowman is the right guy to get that job done. But unless something drastic happens over the next few days, you’d have to imagine he’ll be the one driving the bus. And if we’ve got plenty of trades coming in the months to come, I might head out and find myself a seatbelt.

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