While the Edmonton Oilers have mostly been known for the elite forwards they’ve had throughout their history, they’ve also had some very strong defenders on their blueline over the years.
This is a four-part series, looking at the four best players from the four positions: wingers, centres, defencemen, and goaltenders. In this article, we’ll look at the Mount Rushmore of Oiler defencemen as well as some honourable mentions.
Let’s dig in!

Paul Coffey

Not only is Paul Coffey Edmonton’s best-ever defenceman, but he’s arguably one of the best defencemen in National Hockey League history.
In 1,409 career regular season games, Coffey scored 396 goals and 1,531 points, ranking second in each category for NHL defencemen. The only defenceman with more goals and points is Ray Bourque, who played over 200 more games than Coffey.
In his seven years with the Oilers, Coffey scored 209 goals and 669 points in 532 games, along with 36 goals and 103 points in 94 postseason games. Unlike many early Oilers, Coffey only won three Stanley Cups with the franchise, as he was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins for a package that included Craig Simpson.
Coffey spent parts of five seasons with the Penguins, capturing his fourth Stanley Cup in 1991. However, he missed out on Pittsburgh’s 1992 Stanley Cup championship, as he was traded to the Los Angeles Kings.
Spending parts of two seasons with the Kings (that included Jari Kurri and Wayne Gretzky), Coffey spent parts of four seasons with the Detroit Red Wings, 20 games with the Hartford Whalers, parts of two seasons with the Philadelphia Flyers, 10 games with the Chicago Blackhawks, parts of two seasons with the Carolina Hurricanes, and 18 games with the Boston Bruins.
Like many Oilers during their dynasty, Coffey wasn’t a career Oiler when he should’ve been. Thankfully, he returned behind the bench part-way through the 2023-24 season as an assistant coach.

Kevin Lowe

Another member of the Oilers’ 1980 dynasty, Kevin Lowe was the team’s first-ever draft pick in the National Hockey League, with the team selecting him 21st overall in the 1979 draft.
Lowe won five Stanley Cups with the team, playing 13 seasons with the team that drafted him. In his first stint with the Oilers, Lowe scored 73 goals and 369 points in 966 games. Like many Oilers, Lowe was traded after the dynasty was over, getting a move to the New York Rangers in December 1992.
In 1994, Lowe won another Stanley Cup along with former Oilers Glenn Anderson, Jeff Beukeboom, Adam Graves, Craig MacTavish, Mark Messier, and Esa Tikkanen. As you may know, even Wayne Gretzky would find his way to the Rangers in the latter part of his career.
Unlike Gretzky and many other former Oilers, Lowe returned to the team in his playing days, signing with the team before the 1996-97 season where he scored one goal and 13 points in 64 games. Lowe only played seven games the following season before being forced to retire.
But that’s not where Lowe’s story with the Oilers ends. He joined the team in 1998-99 as an assistant coach, becoming the head coach in 1999-2000 where he led the team to a 32-26-16-8 record. He became the team’s general manager in the summer of 2000, leading the team to a Stanley Cup Final in 2006, before being promoted as the team’s President of Hockey Operations in July of 2008.
In 2015, Lowe was removed from the role and spent another seven years with the organization before his retirement in 2022. Lowe may have left the Oilers for four seasons, but he bled copper and blue as a player and as an executive.

Jason Smith

Unlike most of the Oilers on the Mount Rushmore list, Jason Smith didn’t get his start with the team, as he was drafted 18th overall in the 1992 draft by the New Jersey Devils. Prior to joining Edmonton,  he spent four seasons with the Devils and another three seasons with the Toronto Maple Leafs before a mid-season trade.
In Mar. 1999, the Oilers traded a 1999 fourth-round pick (Jonathan Zion) and a 2000 second-round pick (Kris Vernarsky) to the Leafs to acquire the left-shot defenceman. In eight seasons with the team, Smith scored 31 goals and 113 points in 542 games. Smith was known as a gritty defenceman that’d put his body on the line rather than a pure scorer like most players on the list.
Prior to the beginning of the 2001-02 season, Smith was named as the 13th captain in Oilers’ history and the 11th captain since the Oilers joined the National Hockey League. In 2006, he captained the miracle team that defeated the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Detroit Red Wings in six games. It took all the way until Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals for a team to eliminate the eighth-seeded Oilers. It was just the way Smith led the team.
In the summer of 2007, Smith was traded to the Philadelphia Flyers (along with Joffrey Lupul) for Joni Pitkänen, Geoff Sanderson, and a third-round pick in 2009 pick that turned out to be Cameron Abney. Smith captained the Flyers in 2007-08, helping them reach the Eastern Conference Finals, before spending his final season in hockey with the Ottawa Senators in 2008-09.
Since his playing career ended, Smith has been behind the Senators bench as an assistant coach, and was the head coach of the Western Hockey League’s Kelowna Rockets. Afterward, he spent a season as the Prince George Cougars associate coach, and is currently the Lehigh Valley Phantoms’ assistant coach.

Evan Bouchard

When it’s all said and done, Evan Bouchard may go down as the second-best Edmonton Oilers’ defenceman in franchise history.
Selected 10th overall in the 2018 draft, Bouchard became a regular in the 2021-22 season, scoring 12 goals and 43 points in 81 games. The right-shot defenceman put up similar numbers in 2022-23, scoring eight goals and 40 points in 82 games, but his breakout season was in 2023-24.
Bouchard finished last season scoring 18 goals and 82 points in 81 games, along with six goals and 32 points in 25 postseason games. Heading into the Stanley Cup Finals, it wasn’t a hot take to say if the Oilers were going to win, Bouchard was a great choice to win the Conn Smythe. However, Connor McDavid did Connor McDavid things and became just the second skater to win the award on the team that lost in the Stanley Cup Finals.
Anyway, Bouchard finished fourth in defenceman scoring for points and fifth in goals. He’s only 24 years old and has a lengthy career ahead of him. It’s only a matter of time before he wins the Norris Trophy, and the Oilers should lock him up long-term as soon as possible.

Honourable Mentions

In this section, we’ll look at five Oilers defencemen that didn’t quite make the cut. It’s worth noting that this isn’t a list, but rather five players that I think deserved to be mentioned.

Al Hamilton

So far in this series, we’ve looked at just one player who played with the Edmonton Oilers when they were in the World Hockey Association – Wayne Gretzky, who played his final year in that league.
Al Hamilton spent six seasons in the National Hockey League, playing for the New York Rangers and the Buffalo Sabres. Prior to the beginning of the 1972-73 season, he joined the Alberta Oilers of the WHA and was named their first captain.
He spent all seven seasons with the Oilers organization when they were in the WHA, leading the team in points with 250, as well as games played with 455. Hamilton also was with the Oilers in their first season in the NHL, scoring four goals and 19 points in 31 games before calling it a career.

Charlie Huddy

You can interchange Charlie Huddy for Evan Bouchard, and I don’t think anyone would disagree with you.
Huddy spent 11 seasons with the Oilers, winning five Stanley Cups during their dynasty years. Overall, he finished with 81 goals and 368 points in 684 games. Huddy eventually signed with the Los Angeles Kings prior to the 1991-92 season to play alongside Wayne Gretzky and Jari Kurri among others, scoring 11 goals and 69 points in 226 games in parts of four seasons with the team.
In his final few seasons in the league, Huddy finished with two goals and six points in 32 games with the Buffalo Sabres. The following season (1995-96), he scored five goals and 10 points in 52 games, playing the rest of the season with the St. Louis Blues. He returned to the Sabres organization, playing one final game in the NHL before calling it a career after the 1996-97 season.
Most recently, Huddy spent 11 seasons as the assistant coach of the Winnipeg Jets, but had the same role for the New York Rangers, Oilers, and Dallas Stars.

Chris Pronger

In his National Hockey League career, Chris Pronger scored 157 goals and 698 points, ranking 29th in defencemen scoring in league history. Pronger spent the early portion of his career with the Hartford Whalers, the bulk of his career with the St. Louis Blues, won a Stanley Cup with the Anaheim Ducks, and finished his career with the Philadelphia Flyers.
Sandwiched between the long Blues tenure and the Cup-winning season, the left-shot defenceman played for the Edmonton Oilers, scoring 12 goals and 56 points in 80 games. However, the only reason he’s even on the honourable mentions list is because he helped the Oilers reach Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals in 2006.
Overall, he finished the postseason with five goals and 21 points in 24 games. Shortly after, he requested a trade, which was granted just over a week later. The Oilers sent him to the Anaheim Ducks for Joffrey Lupul,  Ladislav Šmíd, a 2007 first-round pick, a 2008 conditional first-round pick, and a 2008 second-round pick. Perhaps we’ll revisit this trade tree at a later date.

Oscar Klefbom

What could’ve been.
Before the 2011 trade deadline, the Edmonton Oilers shipped Dustin Penner to the Los Angeles Kings for Colten Teubert, a 2011 first-round pick, and a 2012 conditional third-round pick. Although the Kings made the postseason, they were bounced early and that 2011 first-round pick ended up being the 19th overall pick.
With that pick, the Oilers selected Swedish defenceman Oscar Klefbom. Looking at his Hockeydb.com page just makes me sad, as the 31-year-old only played 378 games in the National Hockey League, amassing 34 goals and 156 points. There was no bigger Oscar Klefbom goal than his game-tying goal with less than three minutes left in Game 5 of the first round of the 2017 postseason.
Sadly, he played his final game in the summer of 2020 in the bubble, as the Oilers were unceremoniously bounced from the postseason by the Chicago Blackhawks. It makes me sad just thinking about it, and wherever Klefbom is, I hope he’s happy.

Darnell Nurse

Despite his contract, despite his performance in the 2024 postseason, Darnell Nurse absolutely deserves a spot on the honourable mentions list.
In 640 games with the Oilers, Nurse has 76 goals and 267 points. He only ranks behind Coffey and Huddy in the former, and those two plus Kevin Lowe in the latter category. There’s a strong likelihood that the left-shot defenceman moves into second place in goals by a defenceman in an Oilers uniform, as he trails Huddy by just five goals.
Last season, Nurse scored 10 goals and 32 points in 81 games, his sixth-straight season with 30 or more points, and his fourth season with double-digit goals. The season prior, Nurse scored 12 goals and 43 points, the latter being a career-high. During the 2020-21 season, Nurse scored a career-high 16 goals in just 56 points.
His 16 goals were second in the league for defencemen, trailing just Jakob Chychrun who had 16. However, Nurse didn’t have the benefit of power play time, scoring just one of his goals on the man advantage, finishing with 15 even-strength goals.
All this being said, Nurse is a good defenceman. From a fan’s standpoint, should he be making $9.25 million a season? Probably not, but he’s a solid top-four defenceman who just needs a right-handed Mattias Ekholm to play alongside him.
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