The term “Cup or bust” gets thrown around a lot for the Connor McDavid-led Edmonton Oilers team, meaning every season they don’t win the Stanley Cup is considered unsuccessful.

The Oilers lost in the Stanley Cup Final in each of the last two seasons, but this past season felt especially unfulfilled after they were knocked out in the first round for the first time since 2021. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the problems they faced that contributed to the underwhelming season.

A recurring problem for the Oilers in the 2025-26 campaign was their inability to stay healthy, with several notable players missing significant time throughout the season, including:

– Kasperi Kapanen missed 41 regular-season games
– Mattias Janmark missed 39 regular-season games
– Jake Walman missed 29 regular-season games
– Zach Hyman missed 24 regular-season games
– Leon Draisaitl missed 17 regular-season games
– Adam Henrique missed 17 regular-season games, plus five playoff games

And the list goes on. Of course, those injuries to key players carried into the playoffs, and we later learned that others were also dealing with significant issues in the first round. For example, Connor McDavid and Jason Dickinson were both playing through fractures in the foot/ankle area, with the Oilers’ captain summarizing the injuries in the playoffs as, “too hurt, too soon.”

The Oilers’ 2025-26 season will be defined as one was riddled with injuries, which is quite the opposite of the team Draisaitl alluded to recently as their best version so far — the 2023-24 team that lost in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, where many of their key players missed only a few games during the regular season.

That said, with the Oilers out of the playoffs in the first round for the first time since 2021, a longer summer to reset and recover both physically and mentally will go a long way.

Normally, singling out one Oiler among several problems the team faced throughout last season isn’t my style, but Trent Frederic’s lack of point production is pretty hard to overlook.

Before the season began, I wrote a piece suggesting that a successful year for him, after signing an eight-year, $30.8-million contract, would be reaching at least 35 points, which would be a reasonable return for a player earning $3.85 million per season. I learned I’m no Nostradamus, as I missed that projection by 28 points, with Frederic finishing with just seven points (four goals, three assists).

Frederic was brought in to provide the role that Evander Kane or even Corey Perry brought in terms of toughness, but at a price tag of $3.85 million, there was also an expectation that he would contribute offensively as well.

And when the Oilers were writing on the whiteboard projecting their goal totals for the 2025-26 campaign before the season started, they likely had Frederic close to the 17-goal mark he previously reached with the Boston Bruins, meaning the Oilers were effectively short about 13 goals from that expectation after his underwhelming season.

He started the season slowly, and it seemed like he was struggling to get around the ice, perhaps feeling the effects of a lingering ankle injury from last season. Though it wasn’t all doom and gloom in his game, his play improved after the Olympic break. On the positive side, he dropped the gloves four times last season, finished second on the team with 194 hits, and down the stretch settled into a physical role as one half of the “Bash Brothers” with Colton Dach.

But his final shift of the season in Game 4 against the Anaheim Ducks, where he failed to clear a puck in overtime, ultimately led to a sequence in which the puck was ruled to have crossed the line for a goal, resulting in Frederic being a healthy scratch for the Oilers’ final two games. Overall, the unfortunate sequence of events and the consequences that followed epitomized just how tough a year it was for Frederic.

That said, I was a fan of his game when he was with the Bruins, and I believe Frederic has it in him to bounce back next season because, after all, you can’t do much worse than seven points on the season. Much like other Oilers, a long off-season might be the reset he needs.

When McDavid called the team “average” after their first-round exit to the Ducks, their defensive play was undoubtedly part of it. The Oilers’ defensive struggles were evident at the start of the season, and while there were stretches when things improved, the defensive woes resurfaced in the playoffs.

In the regular season, the Oilers ranked 25th in goals against (265), and of the seven teams that gave up more goals than them, only one qualified for the playoffs: the Anaheim Ducks.

Throughout the season, they consistently gave up a high volume of turnovers, which quite often led to repeated odd-man situations against. MoneyPuck noted that the Oilers were fourth in the NHL in total giveaways (1,321) in the regular season, compared to just 737 two seasons ago. And Natural Stat Trick shows they were sixth in the league in high-danger goals against in the regular season with 94.

Combine that with a bunch of other defensive lapses throughout the season, like failed clears out of the zone that led to goals against, poor gap control by the defence, and not protecting the slot, to name a few, and the Oilers’ defensive play as a whole was problematic in 2025-26.

Additionally, to provide a glimpse of how bad their defensive play was at times throughout the season, there was a month-long stretch starting in January where they were last in the NHL in the following areas, according to Sportlogiq:

– Goals allowed per game (5.00)
– Goals allowed from the slot per game (3.88)
– Inner-slot shots against per game (10)
– Penalty-kill percentage (57.7 per cent)
– High-danger chances against per game

Overall, a big part of what took the Oilers from a really good team to an “average” one was a lack of commitment to defence throughout the season, and they’ll need more buy-in from everyone next season if they want to right the ship.

Truthfully, I’d rather the Oilers win boring 2-1 hockey games than win 7-6 buzzer-beaters moving forward. I’ve had my fun with “pulsating” hockey; I just want to watch a team that wins consistently.

The Oilers’ penalty kill was up and down in the regular season, finishing 20th in the NHL at 77.8 per cent, but it took a big nosedive once they got into the playoffs.

Of course, the Oilers had their fair share of challenges in the first-round series versus the Ducks, but I’d say the biggest one was that they couldn’t keep the puck out of their net on the PK, allowing eight goals on 16 tries for a 50-per-cent success rate.

To go a bit deeper, they allowed a league-high 21.28 goals against per 60 minutes in the first round, and the Oilers were also second in the league in giving up high-danger chances at 36.49 per 60. It’s safe to say the team really missed Henrique on the PK unit in the playoffs, who played the second-most minutes (107:40) on the unit in the regular season.

On that note, Lane Golden noted earlier in the year, the difference in the Oilers’ penalty kill this season compared to the 2023-24 campaign — where a big component of the unit was speed and pressure — whereas this season’s formation was structured to be more passive. I’m not the best X’s and O’s guy, but it seems like they need to get back to their high-pressure ways to get the PK unit back on track next season.

Raise your hand if you thought the Oilers would head into the season with a Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard tandem, only to end it with a Connor Ingram and Tristan Jarry duo.

Yeah, I figured no hands would actually go up.

That said, you could write an entire book series on the Oilers’ goaltending saga throughout the 2025-26 campaign, because another leaky area for the Oilers this past season was between the pipes, which was inconsistent throughout the season.

The tandem of Skinner and Pickard struggled early on, but seemed like they were trending upward, with Skinner going 3-1-1 in the five games before the Oilers shocked the system by trading him, Brett Kulak, and a 2029 second-round draft pick in exchange for Jarry and Samuel Poulin.

In hindsight, the trade seemed like a big misstep by GM Stan Bowman, as statistically they traded for a worse netminder in Jarry, whose regular-season numbers — a 3.86 goals-against average (GAA) and .858 save percentage (SV%) — ended up being worse than Skinner’s numbers with the Oilers before he was dealt.

But the Oilers lucked out that Ingram, whom they traded for before the season started, was able to step up and take the reins when Jarry got injured and faltered, finishing with a decent 2.60 goals-against average (GAA) and a .899 save percentage (SV%) in the regular season. However, those numbers dipped in the post-season, with the netminder posting a 3.86 GAA and a .876 SV% in the playoffs.

But speaking to the instability in net throughout the 2025-26 campaign, combining all four netminders who suited up for the club (Skinner, Pickard, Jarry, and Ingram), the Oilers had the fifth-lowest save percentage in the NHL at .879 SV%. And of all teams that made the playoffs, Edmonton was last in overall save percentage in the first round at .866 SV%.

Nevertheless, it will be a very interesting off-season for the Oilers. If the numbers work, I’d definitely bring back Ingram, but Jarry being locked in for another two seasons at a $5.375-million cap hit is worrisome.

Combine that with Jack Campbell’s buyout cap hit of $2.6 million per year, and Edmonton has close to $8 million tied up between the pipes next season, with Ingram still needing to be re-signed. Plain and simple, the Oilers had several problems last season, but among the list of priorities they need to address this off-season, they really have to figure out their situation in net.

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