4 changes Edmonton Oilers should make this summer
The sting of defeat is still fresh for the Edmonton Oilers.
After another emotionally exhausting run to the Stanley Cup Final, Connor McDavid’s squad could not find a way to exorcise their demons, falling to the Florida Panthers for the second-straight season.
It’s a loss that stings almost more than the first time. At least then, there was a sense that it could be used to add fuel for another Stanley Cup run. This feels like a missed opportunity at the largest scale.
Making it to the Stanley Cup Final in consecutive seasons is a very difficult thing to achieve. To do it three straight times feels like an impossibility, despite the Panthers doing exactly that.
There is, however, a glimmer of hope for this exhausted Oilers fanbase. The team is still led by two of the best players on the planet, McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, and as long as they remain in Edmonton, the Oilers always have a shot at making a deep playoff run.
Work needs to be done to make sure those two players are surrounded by the best team possible. Oilers GM Stan Bowman will finally have his first full summer at the helm to put his stamp on this team, and he should be among the busiest in the entire NHL.
Here are four ways the Oilers could improve the team enough to make another trip to the Stanley Cup Final in 2026.
1. Fix the goaltending
The biggest lesson that the Oilers should have learnt on this playoff run was that the goaltending was not good enough, not by a long shot.
You should not be having several goaltending crises throughout a playoff run, and you certainly shouldn’t be unclear about who is starting an elimination game in the Stanley Cup Final.
Stuart Skinner has been tapped as Edmonton’s starting goalie over the past two seasons, and he has failed to live up to that label thus far. He’s far too inconsistent and lost the net for long stretches during the playoffs. Calvin Pickard was fine in relief, but he still posted a subpar .886 save percentage in the playoffs, while Skinner sat at .889. That isn’t good enough.
Skinner will likely be with the Oilers next season, but they cannot run back the same goaltending tandem for a third-straight season. They need a more proven goaltender to help share the net with the Edmonton native.
The free agent pool isn’t great, with Jake Allen, Alexandar Georgiev, and Alex Lyon headlining the goalies up for a new contract. Perhaps Bowman could explore a trade for a guy like Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, who has had decent results on a brutal Buffalo Sabres team, but may be falling out of favour.
Edmonton cannot afford to stay silent on the goaltending any longer.
2. Get younger and faster
The Oilers looked their age in the last half of that Stanley Cup Final series against the Panthers.
They looked slow, tired, and simply overwhelmed by Florida’s forecheck, which led to Edmonton getting outclassed by the back-to-back Stanley Cup Champions. It’s no surprise either, as the Oilers were the second-oldest team in the NHL with an average age of 30.8.
Having plenty of veterans on your team is great, but there comes a time when it acts as a detriment. Successful teams boast a mixture of older players who provide a steadying presence as well as younger players who can score, provide speed, and give the team some energy at key moments.
The Oilers lacked the latter, and it showed. Going into the 2025-26 season, Bowman needs to find ways to acquire younger talent and to ship off some of the older players on the team, such as Adam Henrique, Mattias Janmark, and maybe even Evander Kane and Viktor Arvidsson.
Matthew Savoie becoming a full-time NHLer next season should help that, but it won’t be enough. The Oilers probably can’t go the offer-sheet route, but there should be some trade opportunities out there to acquire some younger, speedier talent.
Names that could be available include J.J. Peterka, Lukas Reichel, K’Andre Miller, and Marco Rossi.
3. Rejuvenate the coaching staff
Let’s get one thing straight: Kris Knoblauch will almost certainly be the head coach of the Edmonton Oilers on opening night next season.
There is no way the Oilers will make a head coaching change after Knoblauch helped lead the team to back-to-back Stanley Cup Final appearances. His supporting staff, however, could use a makeover.
Edmonton’s special teams play struggled throughout the playoffs, particularly the penalty kill. The Oilers posted a dismal 67.1 per cent success rate, which was third last among all playoff teams, ahead of just the LA Kings and Ottawa Senators. That comes after Edmonton was stalwart on the PK during the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
It feels like Brad Stuart’s message on the Oilers bench has grown stale, and it might be time to find a new voice. The same goes for Glen Gulutzan, who has run the Oilers’ power play since the 2018-19 season and has seen that unit decline in recent years.
Both Stuart and Gulutzan were inherited assistants for Knoblauch, and it might be time to give the Oilers’ bench boss full rein in re-making the coaching staff in his image.
4. Find a top-six scorer for Draisaitl
If the Oilers’ top priority over the last several seasons was finding a starting goalie, getting Draisaitl a reliable scoring winger has been a close second.
Jeff Jackson tried to fix this last summer by signing Jeff Skinner and Viktor Arvidsson in free agency, but that experiment turned out to be a flop. Once again, the Hart Trophy finalist had to spend most of the season carrying wingers who were better suited for bottom-six minutes.
His most common linemates were Vasily Podkolzin and Viktor Arvidsson, who scored eight and 15 goals, respectively. When you play with Draisaitl on a nightly basis, that ain’t gonna cut it.
It’s time to finally remedy this problem and find at least one player who can put up 25-30 goals while riding shotgun with Draisaitl. There are a few paths the Oilers’ brass could take when doing that.
Bowman tried to trade for Mikko Rantanen at the deadline this past season, which included a lucrative contract extension. The big game play, similar to that this summer, would be grabbing Mitch Marner on a massive free agent contract, but that would require a lot of work to open up cap space.