With Sunday night's 3-1 win over the Ottawa Senators, it ensured the Edmonton Oilers entered the Christmas break on a positive note. Actually, positive is the theme in general for this team of late, having won eight of their past nine and 11 of their previous 13 games.
Thanks to the recent run of positive form, the Oilers have turned around a second consecutive slow start to the season and find themselves 21-11-2 overall as of the NHL's Christmas break. This is noteworthy, due to it representing the most points and best winning percentage of the Connor McDavid era as people celebrate the festive holiday.
This may seem somewhat surprising, only because of all the challenges and questions the Oilers faced early on in the 2024-25 campaign, particularly with their overall defensive play as a team. Despite this, the rest of the NHL must now be more concerned than ever about an Oilers team which last season went the full seven games, in a Stanley Cup Final which they arguably should have won.
Bette than ever in recent seasons
With this in mind, thoughts turn to how the Oilers have performed previously in the post-Christmas break during the McDavid era. And it must be reassuring to fans to know that their best runs of his 10 years in the NHL, have come in each of the past two seasons.
In terms of most total points post-Christmas break of the McDavid era, you only need to look back to last season. This is not too surprising, given that the Oilers had won two straight before the festive break and would go on to win 16 consecutive games and fall just one victory short of tying the all-time NHL record held by the Pittsburgh Penguins.
When it was all said and done, the Oilers' post Christmas record for the 2023-24 regular season was 34-12-5. This equated to 73 total points and a .716 winning percentage, which helped them finish second in the Pacific Division behind the Vancouver Canucks.
For the Oilers' best winning percentage of the McDavid era, we turn to the 2022-23 campaign, when they went 32-8-7 post-Christmas break. This translated to an extremely impressive .755 winning percentage, while the 71 points were the third-most post-festive holiday of McDavid's time in Edmonton.
Impact of COVID-19
The three previous seasons between 2019-20 and 2021-22 all had varying degrees of impact, as a result of the challenges of COVID-19. In particular though, we note that the 2020-21 campaign saw the second-most points of the McDavid era at 72, albeit, no games were actually played that season until mid-January.
Here is a rundown of the Oilers' post-Christmas break record for all nine of McDavid's full seasons to date in Edmonton. An asterisk is applied by each season where the team qualified for the playoffs:
Season | Record | Points | Winning % |
|---|---|---|---|
2015-16 | 16-25-6 | 38 | .404 |
2016-17 * | 29-14-3 | 61 | .663 |
2017-18 | 19-23-4 | 42 | .457 |
2018-19 | 17-23-6 | 40 | .435 |
2019-20 * | 17-9-5 | 39 | .629 |
2020-21 * | 35-19-2 | 72 | .643 |
2021-22 * | 31-16-6 | 68 | .642 |
2022-23 * | 32-8-7 | 71 | .755 |
2023-24 * | 34-12-5 | 73 | .716 |
Oilers fans will of course be hoping their team can have a similar level of success compared to the two previous seasons which, when added onto their current record, would put them in an extremely positive position entering the playoffs. Not that a return trip to the Stanley Cup Final would be guaranteed in such circumstances, but you do get the encouraging feeling that this team is better-placed them ever to finally bring the Stanley Cup back to Edmonton for the first time since 1990.