Newly-hired general manager Stan Bowman says that while the Oilers did a lot right in 2023-24, the players need to not get caught up in their success from the previous season.
That is what he told NHL.com’s Derek Van Diest during the 2024 Gretzky Hlinka Cup when accessing the state of his team going into training camp. Bowman stressed that the challenges from the last campaign will not be the same in 2024-25 and the Oilers will need to be prepared for that to build off their Stanley Cup Final run.
“I fell into that trap [with the Blackhawks],” he said. “Everyone figures that here is this year’s team, so next year we have to fix this one little area and then we’ll win. What ends up happening a lot of times, just the way sports goes, what was really successful last year isn’t necessarily going to pick up where you left off and be better next year.”
He knows full well how to handle running a team that is on the cusp of immortality as he went through the same thing while being the GM in Chicago. He took over Dale Tallon in the summer of 2009, months removed from the Blackhawks falling to the Red Wings in the Western Conference Finals. Since his former boss got most of the work done in the offseason, Bowman didn’t put his fingerprints on the organization until well into the 2009-10 season when he locked up Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane to identical five-year extensions as well as a 13-year contract for Duncan Keith. The only notable trades he did that season were sending Cam Barker to the Wild for a package that included Nick Leddy and acquiring Nick Boynton from the Ducks. Those minor moves proved to be enough to help the Blackhawks win the 2010 Stanley Cup.
There are plenty of similarities to where Chicago was back in 2009 to where the Oilers are now in 2024, which was not lost on Bowman. He said the primary difference between the two situations is where Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl are at in their career currently compared to how things stood for Kane and Toews back then.
“Kane and Toews were younger than Leon and Connor were, so they hit the ground running in their young years,” he said. “Most of the success we had were their first five, six or seven years in the League. Where Connor and Leon are now, they’re more established in their careers, not just them, Hyman and Nugent-Hopkins, you go down the list and there is some pretty good experience with this group.”
Bowman knows that the key to extending the extension window will be to secure contract extensions for the Oilers’ two-star forwards and get quality talent around them. Edmonton has certainly done the latter this summer in re-upping all of the supporting cast apart from Warren Foegle while adding Viktor Arvidsson and Jeff Skinner in free agency. As for Draisaitl, Bowman said that contract talks are underway but he didn’t specify where things are going.
Most of the heavy lifting for this summer is done and the big picture stuff will get tackled at a later date, but now the focus shifts to this upcoming season. While a lot went right for the Oilers after their 2-9-1 start last campaign, Bowman emphasized the importance of his team’s progress ahead instead of looking back because there will be a brand new set of challenges heading their way.
“They came up one game short, but it’s a new year,” he said. “One of the things I tried to communicate was that last year was last year, and as much as it was a great run and there’s a lot of interest in looking back at what was a great season, I think it’s important to look forward and how this group is going to come together next season. We have some new pieces, and you don’t know what next year’s team is going to look like.”
