Today, I wanted to zero in on the forwards, which are far and away the easiest of the three position groups to narrow down, at least when it comes to the first three. Let’s start with the locks:

Pretty simple one here. Connor McDavid is the only Oiler to produce more than 1000 points since the year 2000. He’s the best player in the NHL, he brought them to game seven of the Stanley Cup Final, and he’s undoubtedly the face of the franchise.

No need to waste any ink here. He’s obviously going to be on the first team.

Rinse and repeat. Leon Draisaitl is going to be on the team. His 909 points rank second behind only McDavid so far this quarter-century and his 376 goals are the most that any Oiler has scored since the year 2000. He’ll be there right next to #97, as he always is.

After these two, the conversation gets a lot more interesting.

If we go simply by who produced the most during this 25-year run, then the final spot should go to Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and honestly, even beyond the production the case for Nugent-Hopkins is a very good one.

He’s the one first-overall pick from the Oilers run of three straight that stuck around and if he plays out his current eight-year contract, he’ll become the franchise leader in games played.

He is a fan favourite, had massive playoff goals, and he could become the first Oiler to go wire-to-wire spending his entire career in Edmonton.

Still, I feel like the NHL will not just want to make all the picks based on the current iteration of the team and there is another fan-favourite forward who also had some pretty big playoff goals himself: Ryan Smyth.

‘Smytty’ has played more games in an Oilers jersey than Nugent-Hopkins, although that gap will almost be closed by the end of this season, but he didn’t produce as many points. Still, he was the favourite for a decade.

The outrage and heartbreak from his trade out of Edmonton is basically what led to this website becoming a thing.

I think Smyth is the obvious choice for the third spot. Even if his production wasn’t as great as someone like Nugent-Hopkins, what Smyth meant to this city and the role he played in the 2006 Cup run make him a very deserving pick.

Ales Hemsky was another name that I really hummed and hawed about, but I think Smyth was more unanimously loved.

The league does also announce a second team as a part of this exercise and I really do think that the two names I mentioned above that I didn’t include in my first team are clear locks to be on team two.

With Hemsky and Nugent-Hopkins already in place, there is only one other slot and this one gets interesting.

By the numbers, Shawn Horcoff is the next choice. He wore the ‘C’ for a number of years and his 447 points actually rank him above Smyth when you look at this 25 year stretch, although Horcoff played in 176 more regular season games.

The final contract that he signed in Edmonton led some fans to dislike Horcoff towards the end of his tenure but like everyone else on this list, he played a major role in a run to the Stanley Cup Final and was a front-facing part of the team for a very long time.

He’s the obvious third choice for me and honestly, I think the gap between him and the next option is pretty wide.

There are names like Jordan Eberle and Taylor Hall who produced a lot of offence but don’t have playoff success to go with it. Sam Gagner was a fan favourite but never produced at the level of some of these other names. Zach Hyman has the production and the playoff moments, but his tenure has been too short.

No one checks all the boxes the way that the six names I selected do. So to recap, here is my prediction for the Edmonton Oilers Quarter Century team forwards:

Stay tuned for later in the week when I go through which defensemen and goalies should be named to the team.