With just two weeks remaining in the NHL’s regular season, the Edmonton Oilers have all but locked up their place in the Stanley Cup Playoffs for a sixth-straight season. Their magic number to clinch currently sits at just six points.

They’ll need some combination of just three wins in their final six games or three Nashville losses to get the ‘x’ next to their name.

Now, the focus shifts to who the team could face in the first round.

Let’s take a look at the candidates and their paths to potentially meeting the Oilers in round one.

The most likely first-round opponent for the Oilers is the team that they eliminated in the second round of last year’s playoffs: the Vegas Golden Knights.

Vegas has had a very mediocre season. They’re already locked in to lose more games than they’ll win this season with a straight-up record of 34-42 with six games remaining. They’ve been propped up by a bad Pacific Division and a total of 16 loser points.

As it stands right now, they’re five points up on the San Jose Sharks, who have two games in hand but still have head-to-head matchups against the Oilers and Ducks on the schedule.

There is an outside shot that San Jose gets hot and passes Vegas, same with the Los Angeles Kings who also have 79 points but have played one more game.

Edmonton could help both of those teams by beating Vegas tomorrow night.

STRENGTHS: Their biggest strength will be their star power. No matter how bad the team looks right now, they still have Jack Eichel, Mark Stone, Mitch Marner and Shea Theodore on their roster. A strong supporting cast of players like Ivan Barbashev, Pavel Dorofeyev and Noah Hanifin gives them depth that could make them a tougher out than most expect.

WEAKNESSES: On the season as a whole, their defensive metrics look pretty solid, but they are a very slow team, and that’s resulted in them giving up a lot of dangerous chances off the rush. If they have to start pushing and taking some risks, it often results in their mistakes compounding. They have also been getting very poor goaltending all season. They have the worst five-on-five save percentage (SV%) in the NHL.

The Mammoth are the second most-likely first-round opponent for the Oilers and the path is pretty simple. If the Oilers win the division, they will get the top wild card team and Utah is pretty much locked into that spot.

If they were to totally collapse, maybe someone like San Jose, Los Angeles or Nashville could catch them but with less than 10 games remaining that feels very unlikely.

STRENGTHS: With six different 20-goal scorers and a five-on-five offense that ranks 8th in the league, whoever Utah faces will have their hands full in the first round. They also have been getting solid goaltending from Karel Vejmelka this season, who has an .899 SV% on the year and 9.7 goals saved above expected. They’re a very solid team.

WEAKNESSES: Inexperience is the one knock that you’ll hear when it comes to this Utah team. Their powerplay has been quite underwhelming this year as well. Other than that, I really like this team on paper and they’ve had some really strong stretches this season.

Surprisingly, the Sharks find themselves in the drivers seat for the second wild card spot sitting at 79 points, tied with both the Kings and Predators, but they have a game in hand on both of those teams.

Their strength of schedule is tough though. Only three of their remaining eight games are against teams that I would consider out of the playoff race whereas the Kings play five times against teams that are out of it.

That will make it tough for a young Sharks team to catch someone like Vegas, but if they win their games in hand, they’re only a point out.

STRENGTHS: They have a 19-year-old MVP candidate in Macklin Celebrini. That’s their superpower. When Celebrini doesn’t register a point, they basically don’t win.

The only other thing that’s probably worth mentioning is Yaroslav Akarov. He’s been a little inconsistent this season but when he’s on his game, he’s capable of stealing wins for the Sharks. That could be dangerous in a playoff series.

WEAKNESSES: Can I say ‘everything else?’ no? That’s too mean?

All jokes aside, the Sharks struggle to defend at five-on-five and with Celebrini off the ice they are -40 at five-on-five. That is brutal. If the Oilers play the Sharks, it should be a quick series.

The Kings have a very faint chance of catching Vegas. The one thing working in their favour, as I outlined earlier, is their schedule. They play Vancouver twice, Toronto once and Calgary once. If they win all the games that they’re supposed to then they will have a chance but considering they have just 30 wins this season, I don’t think we should be expecting them to run the table.

STRENGTHS: Goaltending. Both Darcy Kuemper and Anton Forsberg have been excellent this year. The team is seventh in five-on-five SV% and despite the fact that I really don’t like their blueline, their expected goals numbers this year are decent. Basically, the strengths of the Kings are the exact same as they’ve been in the past.

WEAKNESSES: They struggle to consistently score. The addition of Artemi Panarin was supposed to help but unfortunately Kevin Fiala got hurt at the Olympics and Kings fans never got to see the two of them in the same lineup.

They are 29th in the league in five-on-five GF/60 and there’s very little reason to believe that their offence will suddenly find a different level.

There is also thankfully, very little reason to believe that we will get Oilers vs Kings for a fifth straight season. The Oilers should finally, have a new first-round opponent when the playoffs open in a few weeks.

Edmonton hockey fans — think you and your crew know playoff hockey? Prove it at the Nation Playoff Draft Party on Friday, April 17th at the River Cree Resort & Casino. Build your playoff roster, compete against other teams throughout the postseason, and battle for $2,500 cash and Nation bragging rights. Team entry is $1,000 for groups of 8, which includes dinner and your first bevy. The night will be hosted by Ryder & Lisa from The Sauce and Tyler & Liam from ON Everyday, so expect plenty of energy, competition, and chirps. Spots are limited — sign your team up now at nationgear.ca. All proceeds from the event support KidSport Edmonton, helping ensure local kids can stay in the game.