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Bold 2026-27 Pacific Division predictions: Oilers win, Ducks crash

Photo credit: Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images

By Tyler Yaremchuk

Sep 2, 2026, 09:00 EDTUpdated: Sep 1, 2026, 14:36 EDT

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September is here, and that means there will be NHL hockey played this month.

We are so close to putting a bow on the offseason and heading into a 2026-27 season that should be one of the more fascinating seasons that we’ve seen in recent memory.

The Eastern Conference is filled with teams looking to bounce back from poor seasons, like the Florida Panthers, Toronto Maple Leafs, Washington Capitals and New Jersey Devils. They also have the defending Cup Champions in the Carolina Hurricanes and the team that won in the offseason in the Capitals.

The Western Conference has young teams like the San Jose Sharks and Chicago Blackhawks looking to prove that they belong in the playoff conversation, and a bunch of other teams, like the Edmonton Oilers, Vegas Golden Knights, Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild, are all pretty much in ‘Cup or Bust’ mode.

To get even more specific, the Pacific Division feels rather unpredictable.

Can the Ducks prove last year wasn’t a fluke? Can the Kings survive without Anze Kopitar? How will the Babcock experiment go? Can Vegas win their fourth regular season division title in five years? Are the Sharks ready to become a playoff team?

Will the Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames continue to suck?

The answer to that final question is obviously yes, but the other ones are really tough.

To get into the spirit of hockey season and to try and make sense of a division that feels like it could go a multitude of ways, here are my three boldest predictions for the Pacific Division in 2026-27.

The Anaheim Ducks miss the playoffs

The Ducks two biggest offseason adds being AJ Greer and Nick Jensen is the first sign that their fanbase should be a little bit concerned.

Their path to being better than last season is basically counting on their young players, specifically on the blueline, to take some steps forward and I’m not sold that will happen. Also, players like Alex Killorn and Chris Kreider are another year older and could take a step back, which could hurt considering they combined for 37 goals last season.

Now, their fancy numbers last season were generally pretty solid and suggest that at five-on-five the Ducks may have even been a bit unlucky last season but they had the third-highest winning percentage in one goal games in the entire league.

In the past, looking at that stat has been a pretty decent indicator of which teams around the league could take a step backward.

Winning close games can mean that you simply got some really good bounces throughout the year and teams rarely ever repeat being in the top-five of that category year over year.

The other teams in the top five if you were curious, were the Hurricanes, Panthers, Devils and Sharks.

The other big storyline that is looming over this team is the uncertainty surrounding Cutter Gauthier, who scored 41 goals last season. He’s still sitting as an unsigned restricted free agent and the Ducks only have $9 million in cap space right now, according to PuckPedia.

If they want to get Gauthier back in the mix before the start of the season, they might need to trade away a veteran, which will hurt their depth up front.

The Ducks made the playoffs last season with 92 points, six ahead of the San Jose Sharks, who were on the outside looking in. Can the Sharks close that gap? I think it’s entirely possible considering they had a much better offseason than their in-state rivals.

Along with the Los Angeles Kings, they’re also plus money to miss the playoffs on Bet365 right now and I like betting on both of those.

The Pacific produces six 100-point players

Last season, six of the eight teams in the division finished with negative goal differentials. No other division had more than four. It was called “The Pillow Pacific” for a reason.

This year, I think this division will produce some very high-scoring games, in part because I believe the Flames and Canucks will once again be junk and teams like the Oilers, Sharks and Golden Knights will thoroughly beat them down when they meet.

I’m also not sold on the Kraken being as good as they were last season and that could help really create a gap between the haves and have-nots in the division.

So, here are my six:

I think Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl both hit the mark (duh). They’ll both be very motivated to show the hockey world that they have things back on track under Babcock.

Then I have both Jack Eichel and Mitch Marner hitting the milestone for the Golden Knights. Eichel has never done it, but has been over a point per game player each of the last three seasons.

He’s the kind of player that is kind of just due to have a year where the offence clicks.

For Marner, last season was weird. The Golden Knights had him playing centre at some points and at the beginning of the season, he never really found a fit. That all changed in the playoffs when he scored 29 points in 22 games. I say he rides that momentum to his second career 100-point campaign.

Macklin Celebrini hit the mark last year as a part of his breakout sophomore season.

This year, I think he brings a friend along with him and we see Will Smith take the jump to elite status in the league.

His points per game rose from 0.61 in his rookie season to .86 last year so the idea of his being a point per game player isn’t really a reach. Also, they added a few nice pieces to the forward group in second overall pick Ivar Stenberg and free agent Mason Marchment.

They’re a better team and I think Smith takes a big leap in year three of his career.

The Edmonton Oilers, unfortunately, win the division

Why is the word unfortunately in the title here? I’ll explain in a second.

It’s pretty crazy that the Oilers have not won their division since 1987, 10 years before Connor McDavid was even born.

I say that streak ends this season. The Oilers had a pretty solid summer adding players like Ryan Shea, Freddie Andersen and Devon Levi. Also, bringing back Jason Dickinson and Connor Murphy were two really important pieces of business for a team that really struggled on the penalty kill last season.

Mike Babcock should help this team avoid their usual early-season slump and I think the addition of DJ Smith combined with the signings they made this offseason should also help with the penalty kill.

Like most around these parts, I’m kind of crossing my fingers that the three-headed monster between the pipes helps the team improve on their .878 team save percentage from last season, which ranked 28th in the league.

There are enough reasons to be optimistic that this team should be right there with the Vegas Golden Knights, who didn’t really have a great offseason.

I like the addition of Parker Wotherspoon to their blueline, but I think the Rasmus Andersson extension will age like milk. He is now their highest-paid blueliner and really struggled at points during their run to the Stanley Cup Final.

They also lost Pavel Dorofeyev, who had scored 72 goals over the last two seasons, and didn’t replace him at all.

Their forward group is another year older and not as dynamic as it was a year ago. Their blueline is still good, but has some question marks, and between the pipes they’re also hoping that Carter Hart can stay healthy and Adin Hill can bounce back.

They aren’t as scary as they have been in years past and I think this could be the year that the Oilers finish ahead of them,

Now time for the unfortunate part: the Oilers aren’t good enough to win the Western Conference and one of my bold league-wide bold predictions for Daily Faceoff is that the Utah Mammoth get one of the top three spots in the Central Division and push one of the Minnesota Wild or Dallas Stars to a Wild Card spot.

So my full prediction is this: the Oilers have a very strong regular season and win their division, but as a result, they end up drawing either the Wild or Stars in the first round of the playoffs, while the Golden Knights get the easier matchup against a team like the San Jose Sharks.

Would you take that? A division win but a tougher first-round matchup? Let me know below and drop your own bold prediction for the division.

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