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Jason Dickinson earned the organization’s trust: Oilers 2025-26 player review
Edmonton Oilers Jason Dickinson
Photo credit: Walter Tychnowicz-Imagn Images
Lane Golden
May 12, 2026, 22:00 EDTUpdated: May 12, 2026, 17:21 EDT
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Welcome to Oilersnation’s annual player review series, where we dive into the Edmonton Oilers season player by player. We’ll look back at the season that was, what kind of impact each player had, and what we could see from them next season. You can read about the analytics behind my analysis here.
As the 2026 trade deadline approached, the Edmonton Oilers’ defensive structure had started to regress to crisis levels not seen since the Decade of Darkness. Over 11 games from January 2 to March 3, they allowed an average of 4.5 goals per game. The situation became unsustainable.
Stan Bowman acquired defensive centre Jason Dickinson from the Chicago Blackhawks, along with Colton Dach, in exchange for Andrew Mangiapane and a first-round pick to help stop the bleeding.
“You have a D-zone faceoff, you’ve got to put your players on the ice, and maybe in the past, or maybe up until today, we always had to be careful who we deployed in those situations, and we end up ramping up the [McDavid] minutes too much,” said Bowman the day of the Dickinson trade. “Now we don’t have to do that.”
Dickinson’s deployment certainly aligned with the organization’s messaging. By season’s end, he ranked second on the team in defensive zone starts per hour and last in offensive zone start percentage. He was their matchup centre, used almost exclusively in defensive scenarios.
The coaching staff threw him to the wolves, and while the ice was tilted against him for the most part, he did his job well. His high-danger chance suppression ranked in the top five among Oilers forwards in the regular season, and HockeyViz ranked his expected goal suppression 19 percent better than league average.
Another tall task for Dickinson was helping one of the worst penalty-killing units in the NHL, which contributed to the team’s rapid rise in goals against during the stretch leading up to the trade deadline. By season’s end, Dickinson led all Oilers in penalty-kill time on ice per game and once again improved one of their biggest weaknesses. 
While he didn’t provide much of any offence for Edmonton, Dickinson did exactly what Bowman brought him in to do — keep games low-event. Unfortunately, a broken foot cut his regular season short, and forced him to play compromised in the playoffs. He had a surprising two-goal performance in Game 1 against the Anaheim Ducks, but missed two games in the series as he struggled to fight through injury. 
Dickinson is an unrestricted free agent this summer, and as a team that’s been searching for a long-term answer at third-line centre for some time, the Oilers will look to bring him back if they can make the money work. 

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