If you’re a Seinfeld fan or have been hanging around the site for any length of time, you know that December 23rd is Festivus, which means it’s time to air out our grievances and celebrate feats of strength. And with the calendar only being a few short days away from wrapping up, there are plenty of Festivus items we need to discuss.

From what I can see, being as passionate about the Edmonton Oilers as we are allows us to embrace Festivus like no other fanbase ever could. Not only do we have the opportunity to prove we’ve been paying attention by venting our well-intentioned grievances, but we also get the chance to celebrate any wins that have happened. If life is about balance, Festivus might be the perfect holiday. Remember, our unwavering dedication to the Edmonton Oilers gives us the right to complain, and the grievances I’m dishing out this year are only my way of trying to help them get better. Let’s get to it.

While everyone’s list of grievances is different, here are the three most significant things that annoyed me about the Oilers this past year that I’d like to see rectified in 2025. Even though no one at the OEG ever asks for my opinion or advice, I’m using my soapbox to purge the dark cloud energy I’ve been carrying through the year.

It’s a Festivus tradition around here to complain about the dead cap space the Oilers carry on their books, and nothing is changing for the 2024 edition. Thanks to the James Neal and Jack Campbell buyouts, the Oilers are missing out on $3.016 million in space that they could have spent on a quality forward or defenceman or whatever they needed.

Dead cap space is one of those things that quietly drags your team down, and I often dream of the day when the team will rid itself of the anchor that is dead cap space. But without knowing what the future holds, I don’t know if that dream will ever come true, especially in a salary cap environment and GM’s love of signing bad deals. Dare to dream? May as well.

I’m not going to rehash the whole offer sheet situation — we all lived it once, and there’s no need to open the wound — but I will say that the bets made leading up to that whole mess are aging poorly. I’ll be the first to admit that I was super into signing Viktor Arvidsson and Jeff Skinner on July 1st, but I also assumed there was a plan at that point to get Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg done as well. Those plans got flipped upside down in a real hurry, resulting in losing two young players that the Oilers would probably love to have on the roster right now.

From my side of the laptop screen, however, all I can think about is how much more I’d love to have Holloway still with the Oilers than Jeff Skinner. Skinner is barely playing right now, while Dylan Holloway is already setting career highs in every offensive category. Even though the Oilers are humming right now, I can’t help but think that they’d be that much better with Holloway still in the mix, and that thought keeps torturing me every time we see Jeff Skinner starting on the fourth line. Figs.

When I think back to Game 7, I can’t help but remember how many Oilers fans were down in Florida for the game and how excited we all were to be there. Having just come back from a 3-0 deficit in the series, it seemed we were in line for one of the greatest comebacks in sports history. When I say that the vibes couldn’t have been higher, I mean it because we partied for the 24 hours leading up to the game like we had that baby in the bag.

As we all know, the Oilers couldn’t complete the comeback. Instead, those who travelled down to Florida were left broke and disappointed, and I’ll never forget how bummed out I was in the back of my Uber on the way to the hotel. I still haven’t seen any footage of the Panthers raising the Cup — I left the rink immediately when the buzzer sounded — but knowing how our boys were so close yet so far is something that still haunts me. Even though I believe they’ll be back in that position again, losing by only one goal still hurts.

Since no Festivus celebration is complete without highlighting some feats of strength, I looked back at the last 12 months and came up with a list of the best things that have been going on with our beloved Oilers. Here are a few feats of strength that come to mind when I look back on 2023, and I’d love to see your lists down in the comments section:

I know I start the Feats of Strength section with Connor McDavid every year, but how can I not? Every game we get to watch him do his thing is worth the time regardless of the outcome, and I think that’s a blessing worth recognizing. So, to see him become one of the fastest players in NHL history to score 1000 points in his career was a memory I’m locking in forever. Not only did he reach the milestone at a ridiculous pace, but doing it at home in front of a Rogers Place crowd that went absolutely bananas was the only way the story could go.

As a lifelong Oilers fan and someone who hasn’t missed many games since I started working at Oilersnation 12 years ago, having Connor McDavid to watch on a nightly basis is a gift I won’t ever take for granted. I know I say that a lot around here, but the things we’ve grown accustomed to him doing on a nightly basis are anything but normal, and I’m going to keep shouting his name from the mountaintops to make sure we all remember how rough life was without him. Covering this team during the Decade of Darkness was torturous, but that all changed with the flip of a golden ticket back in 2015. Now, even 10 years later, Connor McDavid continues to dazzle, and I continue to watch him with as much joy as I did the very first time.

Here’s hoping we’ve got an extension on the horizon that keeps the fun going for a long time.

In last year’s Festivus article, I wrote about how I wished for a max-term extension for Leon Draisaitl in 2024, and boy, am I still buzzing that our wish actually came true. Watching the guy’s progression from being a “maybe he’ll be good” draft pick at third overall to one of the best power forwards the league has ever seen has been a treat, and I’m endlessly excited that we’ll be afforded the chance to keep the good times going for another decade.

As a cherry on the sundae, Draisaitl is having one of the best starts to a season he’s ever had, including the year he won the Art Ross and Hart Trophies. If anything, his name should be at the top of the list for the league MVP award again, and that may also include a chance at the Rocket Richard if he keeps scoring goals at the ungodly pace he’s on right now. So when it comes to feats of strength, how can you not think about Leon Draisaitl and also how he just keeps getting better? When you combine the points and goals with his newly minted dedication to defence, you’ve got the makings of an all-time stud, and I’m endlessly excited to watch him continue to raise the bar in 2025 and beyond.

As much as the loss in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final was painful, the two months leading up to that moment were some of the best times of my life. I was lucky enough to travel to all four cities the Oilers visited during that run, and to say that I feel endlessly grateful for my job would be the understatement of a lifetime. I’m incredibly blessed to have had the opportunity to follow the Oilers from L.A. to Vancouver to Dallas before wrapping up in Florida, and those are memories I’ll carry with me for a lifetime.

The good news is that while what happened in June was endlessly painful, the Oilers are still a fantastic hockey team, and they’ll have the chance to do it all over again in a few months from now. Who knows if we’ll get to the Stanley Cup Final again — Gord knows I hope so — but I’ll be ready to do my part by following them around and putting myself in a pile of debt that I’d rather not talk about right now. Either way, the run from this past spring was one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced, and how could I do a Feats of Strength list without celebrating those magical two months?

When the Oilers fired Jay Woodcroft in November of 2023, I knew nothing about the guy replacing him. All I knew about Kris Knoblauch was that he coached Connor McDavid in junior and that bringing him in at that moment felt like a strange choice geared at keeping the captain happy. I may not have agreed with the choice, but I understood the tinfoil hat theory that many of us were passing around.

What I didn’t expect, however, was that Knobby would turn out to be a rockstar coach in his own right. The guy came in at the lowest of lows for the franchise and completely turned the culture around. Instead of harping on losses, Knoblauch preached patience and getting back to basics, reminding guys that hockey is supposed to be fun and that they’d be better off if they had some, even during the tough times. Even though we all hoped the new voice would lead to a turnaround, no one in their right mind could have expected what happened next.

Over the next seven months, the Oilers went from being in the league’s basement to as close as you can get to winning it all without actually getting there, and a big part of the credit has to go to our level-headed bench boss. And the results don’t lie either. Through his first 100 games as the team’s head coach, Knoblauch’s 64-29-7 record through 100 games is the best in Oilers history. Isn’t that bananas when considering some of the teams who have played and won here before? It’s wild. And while I still don’t believe Jay Woodcroft was the reason the Oilers stunk when he got fired, it’s pretty hard to argue the results we’ve seen with Knoblauch at the helm. If that’s not a feat of strength, then I don’t even know what we’re doing here.