With Saturday afternoon's 3-1 victory over Macklin Celebrini and the San Jose Sharks, the Edmonton Oilers have improved their record in the 2026-27 season to 4-0-1, collecting points in each of their first five games and putting together a four game winning streak in October. They're a team with a new coach, a significant amount of roster turnover, and a fair number of players nursing injuries, and yet, while it hasn't been perfect, they already look better than last year's version did.
It has appeared that the team is still a work in progress. They allowed 13 goals against in their season opening back-to-back series versus the Vancouver Canucks. They were outshot for two periods by the Seattle Kraken. And they fell behind 0-2 in the revenge game versus the Anaheim Ducks on October 7th. But not only did they find ways to capture standings points, they found consecutive victories, something the 2025-26 Oilers found extremely challenging.
Coaching and strategy
I'm on the record as being against the hire of Mike Babcock. But I don't make those decisions for the Oilers, and now that Babcock is here, it's worthwhile to assess him on the play and results of the team he's been hired to coach. And within this five game sample, there are some things to like.
The Oilers are expected to produce offense. Their 14 goals versus the Canucks weren't a massive outlier, but it was fair to say that scoring at that pace wasn't sustainable, and that the defense was going to have to tighten up. The Oilers focus had clearly shifted in last Saturday's game against the Kraken, with Edmonton very responsibly holding the game at a 1-1 tie until the 17th minute of the third period.
Then, against the Ducks, a first intermission adjustment was clearly needed. The Oilers surely felt some emotion in the matchup with the team that sent them home early in Round 1 of last year's Stanley Cup Playoffs, and the penalties and special teams failure to kill them gave Edmonton a hill to climb over the last 40 minutes of the game. But from the drop of the puck in the second period, it was clear that something had shifted. Suddenly it was the Ducks who looked a step behind the play, heading to the penalty box, and digging the puck out of their own net.
Babcock still has plenty left to prove, but it seems clear that he has been capable of identifying and addressing individual issues. The team has only faced Pacific Division foes thus far, and the third week of this month will be a far more clear indication of their overall ability to win against contending teams. The Oilers play the always dangerous Minnesota Wild, the defending Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes, and the new home of Gavin McKenna, the Toronto Maple Leafs. If the winning continues to and through that week, the Oilers just might be a team to beat this season.
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