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Are the 2024-2025 Edmonton Oilers the biggest preseason cup favourites of all time?

Filatov2Kovalev2Bonk said:
Edmonton is a flawed team like we were in the Pizza Line era. Just two super-scorers and a middling supporting cast is not enough to win a Cup, let alone be a contender. We had Alfredsson at least, who was a two-way beast.

Oilers are missing:
A Selke-level forward. This could be McDrai if either of them were willing to shave their points total for the greater good.
A Norris-level "D". Bouchard might be this...some day, but right now he is still growing into himself.
Vezina-level "G": Not a chance here. Pray Skinner can be average and steal some games.

Overall age and team speed is a concern as well. This looks like the last chance for this core; McDrai will be beloved forever by the Oil fanbase but other teams are at various levels of improvement and won't roll out a red carpet for them come playoff time.
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Middling support cast? What do people expect? It's a capped league. I think their support cast is pretty good. I'd take Edmonton's support over a team like Toronto where a GM and pres. are totally clueless and don't know the hell they are doing.
 
Avs, Oilers, Canucks. Teams predicted to be good all have questions about goaltending.
 
And there you go. Oilers somehow decided they'd upgraded from Ceci with Emberson based on 30 games Emberson played last year where his underlying stats were pretty meager.

Last night... Two worst skaters on the oilers by a wide margin were Nurse and Emberson. The 3rd pair didn't play well either. Kulak and Dermott also played poorly.

How can a team be an overwhelming favorite when four of their six defenders stink and the goalie is a guy named Jeff Skinner absolutely no hockey person would place in their top 20 NHL goalie rankings?

Which teams with below average defense and goaltending have ever dominated an NHL season?


If there was any good news, the Oilers bottom six (Brown and Janmark in particular), continue to play well as carryover from the playoffs.

But you know who else looked real good in game one? Broberg and Holloway. Things the Oilers lost in the fire.
 
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I think the year the Avalanche signed Kariya and Selanne, everyone pretty much handed the Cup to Colorado before the season began, actually it was hard to think otherwise, the team was stacked. It did not work out though. The Oilers were considered top Cup contenders last season and are again this season. I fully expect them to be again as well and last season was the first season I ever considered the McDavid Oilers Cup contenders.
 
They will be fine. Its one game and those home openers seem to kill the home teams. They have some warts but once McDrai get rolling it will cover them up.
 
CantHaveTkachev said:
this will be fun to read just like that "Oilers look bad" thread from last November that eventually needed to be locked because they won 16 in a row lol
people never learn

we lost 8-1 last year in the opener and started 2-9-1...this is nothing
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Hockey fans have goldfish memories when it's easy to "pwn" their rivals.
 
It is legitimate to say the Oilers need another solid defenseman on the right side and every indication is they full intend to pursue one come deadline time and have even positioned themselves for that type of move. Also Skinner is a questionable goalie some of the time and he was not very good last night but people need to stop jumping the gun based on one game, especially at the start of the season.
 
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I know the near comeback and recovering into the playoff birth were something, but if anything, all it shows you is that will and desire are incredibly important parts of the game. Is this a turning point for the organization or did they exhaust their nine lives?

My guess is they're not that good. They had a nice bit of luck in the early rounds and that DAL team lost steam and got banged up. It truly sucks that COL and DAL had to face off in the 2nd round.
 
I think it's pretty obvious from last night's game the Oilers need more offense in order to be successful. 60 minutes of play and they failed to score a single goal! More! They need more!
 
CantHaveTkachev said:
this will be fun to read just like that "Oilers look bad" thread from last November that eventually needed to be locked because they won 16 in a row lol
people never learn

we lost 8-1 last year in the opener and started 2-9-1...this is nothing
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I feel like hoping you can climb out of being last place in the league every season isn't a sustainable strategy...
 
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I think the Oilers and their fans underestimated the let-down effect of playing such a long season where they come up just two goals short, then a short off-season, and having to restart all the way back at square one with the rest of the NHL. That's a huge drop and it's daunting.

Their offseason was only so-so. Huge they resigned Drai, but at zero discount. The shock offer-sheets stole two support pieces and they otherwise lost a ton of speed, durability, youth and size. McLeod is a good 3C. He was replaced by a small prospect that was probably over drafted and of little to no use in the final year of the cheap deals for Drai and Bouchard. It only gets much harder next year to fill this roster.

Those former Oilers were replaced poorly on the backend with Emberson and Dermott... and questionably at forward with aging players like Skinner and the injury prone Viktor Arvidsson.

Some of you looked at this as a roster upgrade over last season. Others of us didn't see it that way. I think the Oilers are worse today and also missing the type of pieces that make for effective playoff hockey performers. Frankly, I'd rather have guys like Foegele, Holloway and McLeod flying up and down the ice puck hounding than floaters like Skinner and Arvidsson looking for goals. You don't score much in the playoffs if you don't have the puck.
 
I’d rather not see the team need to dig itself out of another early hole, but they’ll be fine.
 
As an Oilers hater are you posters seriously dumb enough to be writing them off after one game again…… 🤦‍♂️

Figured you would have learned from that thread last year but here we are….
 
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CantHaveTkachev said:
this will be fun to read just like that "Oilers look bad" thread from last November that eventually needed to be locked because they won 16 in a row lol
people never learn

we lost 8-1 last year in the opener and started 2-9-1...this is nothing
Click to expand...

Glass half full
The Oilers get going when the going gets tough.

Glass half empty
The Oilers don't get going until the going gets tough.

They're the Rocky balboa's of the NHL. It's kind of fun to cheer for too to be honest. They go down in everything before they get up. Regular season.. playoff series. I think they've played all of 2 playoff series since 2017 that they've never been down in.

This team just isn't a front runner, at least they never have been and even just a peek at them last night. They likely won't be this year.

They're a really good hockey club but I'm not sure they'll ever win it all with this type of mannerism. Eventually you run into a team that's good enough to hold on like Vegas 2 years ago, and Florida last year.

I'm calling the games from now to Nov 15ish Pre-Season 2 for the Oilers. Then queue the Rocky theme song :P
 
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LuGBuG said:
As an Oilers hater are you posters seriously dumb enough to be writing them off after one game again…… 🤦‍♂️

Figured you would have learned from that thread last year but here we are….
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I don't think anybody is writing them off as contenders. But a strong serious threat to win it all? Perhaps yes.
Last night exposed some gaping holes in their lineup (as many non Oiler fans and a few honest Oilers fans have been pointing out prior to last night's game) where all summer long so many Oilers fans have been either trying to cover up, poo poo, or or some were even going so far as to crow about how their team was better this year than last. Give them this... Oilers fans have never been accused of lacking in hutzpah or shyly sitting in a corner keeping their horn under wraps. They tend to toot it loudly and frequently.
It's no wonder the general HF fan tends to pounce on them like a pack of ravenous wolves at every opportunity. And last night was an opportunity served up on a silver platter.
 
CantHaveTkachev said:
this will be fun to read just like that "Oilers look bad" thread from last November that eventually needed to be locked because they won 16 in a row lol
people never learn

we lost 8-1 last year in the opener and started 2-9-1...this is nothing
Click to expand...

Sooo.. a coaching change coming?
 
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Rubi said:
Give them this... Oilers fans have never been accused of lacking in hutzpah or shyly sitting in a corner keeping their horn under wraps. They tend to toot it loudly and frequently.
It's no wonder the general HF fan tends to pounce on them like a pack of ravenous wolves at every opportunity. And last night was an opportunity served up on a silver platter.
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Which thread started by an Oiler fan recently has them tooting their own horn?
 
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