Oilers Waste Chance at NHL Trade Deadline and Put Connor McDavid's Future in Doubt

Maybe it won't be so bad after all.

Maybe Evander Kane will start playing, Viktor Arvidsson will start scoring, and Stuart Skinner will start stopping as many pucks as he lets past him.

Giving the Edmonton Oilers a chance to get a game further than they did last year.

Lately, though, it's looked about as likely as Canada sacking the beaver in favor of the bald eagle.

And that was before Friday afternoon.

Now, it's even worse.

The NHL's trade deadline provided its annual shift in the competitive paradigm, with landscape-altering bombs dropped in cities across the Western Conference map, particularly Dallas and Denver, and elsewhere in the league as well.

Everywhere, it seems, but Edmonton.

Oh sure, the Oilers added a little jam with Trent Frederic, a little blue-line alacrity with Jake Walman and some bottom-six versatility with Max Jones. But laid alongside deals that yielded Mikko Rantanen, Brock Nelson, Charlie Coyle and others, the haul headed to northern Alberta suffers by comparison.

No stabilizing goalie to platoon with Skinner. No dependable winger to pair with Leon Draisaitl. No reality-based reason for fans to stake out parade spots on Whyte Avenue.

Of course, there's no denying GM Stan Bowman's hands were tied by the fact that he had the salary-cap equivalent of three large coffees and a box of Timbits with which to work. That's hardly consoling, though, when the teams you'll probably have to beat to return to the finals are not only acquiring multi-time 100-point scorers but extending them, too, for eight years and $96 million.

The Oilers were Cup favorites a month ago.

Today, they might be the sixth-best team in the West.

The orange-and-blue optimists, naturally, will suggest the team's recent tailspin is only temporary. And they're not without evidence given that Edmonton's .695 points percentage from Nov. 1 to Feb. 1 was the best in the conference and its 2.56 goals-against average across the same 41 games was sixth-best in the league.

They’ll also point out that the Oilers have a habit of sluggishness after long breaks, including the 3-9-1 start that cost Jay Woodcroft his job in 2023, a 4-5-1 start under Kris Knoblauch this season, and the current 3-5-0 funk they’ve been in since Connor McDavid ended the 4 Nations Face-Off.

So, they'll say, there's no real reason for alarm. Especially after Edmonton beat Dallas, 5-4, in Rantanen's Saturday night debut with his new team.

And they're not wrong. But neither are those who suggest—amid another MVP season from Draisaitl and the perpetual excellence of McDavid—that anything less than a title is not only disappointing but embarrassing.

Think about it.

Can anyone remember a team, in any major sport, which had two MVPs and past scoring champions, both still in their 20s, that not only never won a championship, but never, aside from last spring's 15 wins, got appreciably close?

Yeah, us neither.

And it's particularly ill-timed given that July 1 will start the clock on the Oilers' opportunity to extend McDavid's existing contract before it runs out at the end of next season.

Running mate Draisaitl giddily re-upped for eight years in the afterglow of the near-miss comeback against Florida last summer, but the specter of an early-round ouster this time is less likely to entice McDavid to stay put and more likely to start other teams working on would-be trade deadline packages to entice No. 97 to head elsewhere next March.

It's the doomsday scenario for Bowman, his subordinates and Edmonton fans.

And unless Kane, Arvidsson and Skinner soon get working on an almost unprecedented surprise, it could make the disappointment of the loss to the Panthers seem blissful by comparison.

Tick. Tick. Tick.