The Edmonton Oilers Have A Different Feel To Them This Year
TSN Director of Scouting Craig Button joined Jay Onrait on SportsCenter and was asked if the Edmonton Oilers are the team to beat in the Western Conference.
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Jay Onrait: “For more on this Edmonton Oilers victory Wednesday night over the Golden Knights, here is our Director of Scouting Craig Button. Craig, this is a significant win for the Edmont Oilers. Their team is their sixth in the last eight games because not only do they not have their captain, but they’re playing a team that knocked him out of the playoffs last postseason, and they very well might have to face again this season. Where would you rank the Oilers right now, Craig, in terms of the contenders in the Western Conference?”
Craig Button: “I put them right at the top, along with the Dallas Stars. They’re in the Central Division, the Stars, but when you consider what the Edmonton Oilers have done since Kris Knoblauch has taken over, they’ve been the best team in the league.
There are top five goals and four goals against Power Play penalty killing; nothing they’ve been doing has been accidental. Everything they’ve been doing is with a purpose, and it’s with the idea that this is what it takes. When you go into a game without Connor McDavid, and certainly that leaves you short-handed, that would be an understatement, to say the least.
But this Edmonton Oilers team is showing that they’re much, much more than just one or two or three players and that’s what it takes to compete for a Stanley Cup and win a Stanley Cup. So the Vegas Golden Knights roll into town, they’re trying to find their game and the Edmonton Oilers say not, not tonight, not on this Wednesday night. You’re not going to do that. Go try your game somewhere else because we’re going to take you and dispatch with you.
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And this comes on the heels of what they did last Friday to the Colorado Avalanche who knocked them out in the conference final and 2022. That was a 6-2 victory. So you want to be serious about winning the Stanley Cup. You got to play the right way. You got to do the right things. And the Edmonton Oilers have done that since November 13th.
And now, two serious competitors, the Colorado Avalanche and the Vegas Golden Knights, the two last Stanley Cup champions, come into Edmonton and are dispatched summarily. And that’s what it takes to show these teams. Hey, listen, you think you have a chance? Not against us?
I love the attitude that they have. I love how they went about it. And right now, when I look at the Western Conference, I see Dallas and Edmonton in a collision course in the conference final.”