The Edmonton Oilers are off to a winning start in 2025, emerging victorious in their first two games of the year and extending their overall winning streak to three games. As such, they sit fifth in the Western Conference with a 24-12-3 record ahead of Monday's slate of NHL action, just six points back of the Winnipeg Jets in top spot.
Despite all of the positives however, the Oilers are trending in the wrong direction in the latest round of NHL power rankings. Although this does come with a caveat, as the major sports media outlets featured this week, wrote their latest rankings prior to the team winning their two latest games at the weekend, when they had a record of 22-12-3.
To be clear, the Oilers are still ranked well overall, but it's still something to take into account. In addition, consider that a couple of our usual go-to media outlets are still not included but should return next time around, more specifically The Athletic and CBS Sports.
There throughout all the festivities
The one constant throughout the holiday period has been NHL.com, with their 'Power 16' rankings. (We can only hope Gary Bettman's league office allowed their staff some time off like the players.) The Oilers experienced a slight dip from last time around, sliding down one spot from seventh place to eighth.
On an individual level among NHL.com's 15 voters, Mike Zeisberger is most impressed with the Oilers, ranking them in fourth place. At the other end of the spectrum, Mike G. Morreale is least-convinced about how good the team is, by putting them in 13th spot.
As for NHL.com's latest theme, it's an expected but still fun one, looking at what the New Year resolutions should be for each of the 16 teams. For the Oilers specifically, the main one is not giving up the lead so much, which makes perfect sense; it doesn't matter if you can score for fun, if you can't hold onto leads come crunch time in the playoffs.
Big swings for the Oilers
Next we turn to Bleacher Report, who we don't normally include (nothing personal!), but stepped in last week in the scarcity of available of our regular NHL power rankings outlets. Their inclusion was notable for moving the Oilers up considerably, from 12th place all the way to fifth spot in the rankings.
Bleacher Report has pulled a fairly similar trick this time around but in the opposite direction, moving the Oilers down from fifth place to a ranking of ninth. Lyle Fitzsimmons notes that the Oilers had the third-best win percentage during December, although it's a concern that one of the two better teams was divisional rivals the Vegas Golden Knights, who are looking dangerously good in general this season.
Despite this, the Oilers and their fans should be encouraged by Fitzsimmons commenting that over the past three seasons, 40 of the 48 teams sitting in a playoff spot on Jan. 1, have gone on to make the playoffs. With this calculating to 83.3 percent, this is the type of success rate which should cheer up people in Edmonton.
Finally we come to Sportsnet, who did not post power rankings last time around. In any event, they have moved the Oilers up to an arguably too high sixth spot, after previously ranking them 10th for two consecutive weeks.
As with NHL.com, Sportsnet's Ryan Dixon goes with a theme of a New Year resolution, albeit for all 32 teams as opposed to just 16. In any event Dixon is more straightforward is stating that the Oilers need to get back to the Stanley Cup Final and finish the job, something which we of course firmly agree with for a team containing the best player in the world, along with another who is regularly among the top five-10.