Even with the Edmonton Oilers' 14-3-3 start to the 2026-27 NHL campaign in mind, the team still has work to do when it comes to truly establishing a gap to the other teams that might call themselves Stanley Cup contenders.
While the Oilers hold a lead atop the Pacific Division, the Vegas Golden Knights are 13-5-2 to start the Ryan Craig era of the team. At the same time, the Minnesota Wild hold a one-point advantage on the Oilers for the best record in the Western Conference; the Nashville Predators are only six points back of the Oilers in the conference standings.
The Oilers have beaten the Wild earlier this season, and they don't play Nashville until January. That said, Edmonton will have to take on the Golden Knights on November 24; as things stand, that game will more than certainly determine whether Edmonton can run away with a division title or if the division might be a closer race than one might have anticipated.
To make that game even more important, it will immediately follow the conclusion of the Oilers' upcoming six-game road trip. That road trip could easily hand all the divisional momentum to Vegas, but it could also give the Oilers a massive boost heading into the season's second quarter.
What the Oilers' road trip looks like
The Oilers' six-game road trip begins with a back-to-back against the Toronto Maple Leafs and Philadelphia Flyers. Then, the Oilers will head south for games against both Florida-based teams - the Florida Panthers and Carolina Hurricanes - before heading to Raleigh for a Saturday matinee against the Carolina Hurricanes. They'll conclude the road trip on Sunday, November 22 against the St. Louis Blues.
How well should the Oilers do to firmly establish themselves in the upper tier of contenders?
The benchmark here has to be a 4-1-1 record.
The games against Toronto, Philadelphia, and St. Louis will be the most winnable here. One could swap the Panthers for the Flyers, who have points in each of their last three games, but both ways of thinking would be seen as correct. More on the Panthers in a bit, but let's stay on the topic of these three teams.
The Leafs have lost each of their last five games, with their most recent contest being a 5-2 loss to the Wild. That run has seen them get outscored 22-9 and fall six points back of the Panthers for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. Such a run has also fuelled backlash surrounding the decision to hire Jim Hiller as the team's head coach (I think I saw a Twitter comment describing his employment as wage theft).
In terms of what the analysts think the rematch between the Leafs and Oilers could look like.
As per TSN's James Duthie: "it could get ugly."
The Blues might be the better of the three teams in terms of their record, but they've been prone to some not-so-great hockey. Four of their last six games have seen them concede at least three goals; the team has gone 1-2-1 in those contests. That said, when the Blues win, they're able to get solid defensive play and pull off a one-goal margin of victory. In fact, just under half of the Blues' nine wins on the season were decided by one goal, while five of St. Louis' victories have seen a combined score of five goals or fewer.
If the Oilers can ramp up the goalscoring pressure early and often, they will be able to keep a Blues team that is essentially a one-goaltender unit out of the game. The Blues' season thus far reinforces that strategy; seven of St. Louis' eight regulation losses saw them lose by at least two goals.
The Flyers are the most in-form team of the three and they arguably pose the most risk when it comes to the Oilers dropping points. Just once since the pandemic have the Oilers put together a winning streak against the Flyers, which extends to just two occasions when considering the past 11 years of the head-to-head rivalry.
Now let's talk about the other three teams: the Lightning, the Panthers, and the Hurricanes.
The Lightning have won six of their last eight games, though the two losses could easily have been reversed. Tampa Bay lost to Nashville in a shootout, and their second game against the Winnipeg Jets was only won at the very last second. Their winning run has them at the top of the Atlantic Division after trailing in third for much of the last few days.
While the Panthers have shown in recent years that they can be a nuisance to the Oilers, they haven't necessarily proven that to start this season. Though they are 11-7-2, they haven't won more than three games in a row and they've lost two straight on a pair of occasions.
The same trend is proven at the individual level. While Matthew Tkachuk is among the league leaders in terms of points, the Panthers are only mid-table in terms of defense and give up three goals per game.
When it comes to the Oilers' contest against the Hurricanes, they'll do something that they haven't done since the NHL expanded the regular season schedule to include two head-to-head games against the other teams in the league. Not only have the Oilers never swept a defending Stanley Cup champion during their head-to-head series, but they also haven't posted a perfect regular-season record against such an opponent since the 2007-08 season. It is worth noting that such a record saw the Oilers win their lone Stanley Cup rematch against the Hurricanes, so make what you will of that statistic.
If the Oilers can pull off the feat, they will have recorded four valuable points at an instance where not many other teams would be able to succeed. That's easily leverage enough to keep the Oilers in a strong position in the Pacific Division and the league standings as a whole.
With the above in mind, fans should expect the Oilers to claim victories against the Leafs, Flyers, and Blues. In terms of the latter three teams, the win will most likely come against the Panthers, while an overtime point at minimum should be expected against either the Lightning or Hurricanes. That kind of a record would be enough to convince fans that the Oilers can confidently and comfortably get wins against the teams they need to beat; at the same time, it would give fans optimism when it comes to keeping pace with the rest of the league's top teams.
And given that there is an even split between good and not-so-good teams, this will truly be an opportunity for the Oilers to set themselves apart from recent editions of the franchise, many of which would have probably folded at this kind of stretch.
If the Oilers can pull off a winning record, then there might not be much argument against the fact that this edition of the team is on par with its historic predecessors.
Add us as a preferred source on Google