May 29, 2022 by Ryan Lotsberg

The Edmonton Oilers were one of the worst teams in the NHL in the 2010s. The Oilers failed to make the playoffs for 10 consecutive years after going all the way to Game 6 of the 2006 Stanley Cup Final. They banked their hopes on a crop of high draft picks like Jordan Eberle, Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Nail Yakupov. Those were dark days indeed.

They spent those years looking up at the elite teams in the league. The Chicago Blackhawks won three Stanley Cups in that time. The Pittsburgh Penguins won two Stanley Cups in that time, and they would add one more in 2017, the year that the Oilers ended their playoff miss streak. The Los Angeles Kings won two Stanley Cups in that time.

The Anaheim Ducks won five straight Pacific Division titles between 2012-13 to 2016-17. Many people thought that 2017 was the year that Connor McDavid’s Oilers had arrived as contenders after winning their first playoff round since their run to the Final in 2006, but they would fall to the Ducks in the second round. The Oilers would have to wait for their chance to rule the Pacific Division.

That loss was followed by more disappointment and failure. They failed to make the playoffs in 2018 and 2019. They looked like they had righted the ship in 2020. They were in second place in the Pacific Division when the COVID pandemic paused the season. However, they would infamously lose to the 12th place Chicago Blackhawks in the play-in round. They followed that performance up by getting swept by the Winnipeg Jets in the first round of the 2021 playoffs.

McDavid and Leon Draisaitl had combined to win multiple scoring titles and Hart Trophies in the early parts of their careers. They had asserted themselves as the two best players in the world, but playoff success had eluded them. The 2020-21 season was McDavid’s sixth in the league, and the team had won only one playoff round in those six years. Oilers fans were beyond frustrated, and I can only imagine how frustrated the players must have been.

No team can stay at the top forever, and no team stays at the bottom forever. The mighty fall and new challengers emerge to take their thrones. The 2022 playoffs have seen the Oilers emerge as contenders, and they have taken down the formerly mighty along the way.

The Kings haven’t been the team that won those Stanley Cups for a few years now, but they were a surprise playoff team in 2022 that still had some core players from those teams like Anze Kopitar, Jonathan Quick, Drew Doughty, and Dustin Brown. They would be the first round opponent for the Oilers. To thicken the plot, the Kings were coached by Todd McLellan, the Oilers coach during their 2017 playoff run. The Oilers are now coached by McLellan’s former assistant Jay Woodcroft.

It could have easily played out like the Blackhawks series in 2020 where the team that had recently fallen from glory prevented the up and coming Oilers from fulfilling their potential. The Kings would prove to be a challenge for the Oilers. They won game one in Edmonton, and they split the first four games, even though the Oilers won games two and three by a combined score of 14-2. The Kings also won game five to put the Oilers on the brink of elimination.

This time would be different though. McDavid put the team on his back in games six and seven, and the Oilers finally won another playoff round. They took down a former giant in the process. 

Their opponent in round two would be the Calgary Flames who were coached by Darryl Sutter, the man that coached the Kings to their Stanley Cup wins. The Oilers had a slow start in game one, but eventually came back from being down 5-1 to tie the game at 6 before losing 9-6. The Oilers lost, but they still scored six goals on Jacob Markstrom, the goalie that chose to sign with Calgary over the Oilers in 2020. They would score at least four goals in every game on their way to victory in the five game series against Calgary.

The Oilers beat the Kings. They beat their former coach. They also beat the Kings’ former coach. These two series wins for the Oilers signify that the torch has finally been passed. The Oilers are no longer staring up at the vaunted Kings, everyone else in the Pacific Division, and all of the other elite teams in the NHL. They’ve put the ghosts of draft lotteries and playoffs past behind them. They are now the class of the Pacific Division, and they are in a position to hold that distinction for the foreseeable future.

The Ducks had the regular season division titles, but the Kings were the class of the Pacific Division in the 2010s. The Blackhawks were the class of the Central Division. Those two teams combined to win five out of six Stanley Cups between 2010 and 2015. They had an epic Conference Final matchup in 2014.

The Oilers have a date in the Western Conference Final with the team that has earned their distinction as the new class of the Central Division, the Colorado Avalanche. McDavid, Draisaitl, Nugent-Hopkins, Zach Hyman, Evander Kane and the Edmonton Oilers will face Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Gabriel Landeskog, Cale Makar, Nazem Kadri and the Colorado Avalanche for the Western Conference title and a berth in the Stanley Cup Final.

It isn’t just a berth in the 2022 Stanley Cup Final on the line in this Western Conference Final. These two teams are poised to battle for Western Conference supremacy for the rest of the 2020s. The winner of this series will have the first strike in what is likely to be a battle that spans the better part of a decade. The loser will have a new foe and a new mental hurdle to have to leap over on their quest to sip from Lord Stanley’s mug.

This matchup boasts three of the top three to five players in the world in McDavid, Draisaitl, and MacKinnon. Cale Makar is the most dynamic defenceman in the NHL today. Both teams have elite scoring threats, and both teams have depth. This series could rival that epic 2014 showdown between the Kings and the Blackhawks. What a battle it will be.