Doesn’t Anybody Want To Win This Wretched Division?

When Connor McDavid speaks, Edmonton listens because, well, who else is there? The man wasn’t nicknamed McJesus for his knowledge of canonical law.

Thus, when he was asked after the latest Oilers’ sack-fouling, a 5-2 home loss to Tampa Bay on Saturday, the two-time Stanley Cup finalist and no-time Stanley Cup champion went for subtle condemnation of his division. Depending on whose interpretation you choose to embrace, he also may have quietly groined his own team and its coach. We hesitate to be more definitive because even the ultra-polite Canadian soul gets very snippy in public when the local hockey team is disappointing the customers.

But McDavid used the entire wretched Pacific Division as cover for his own team’s current run of walking, and it is a very stylish way of saying, “We stink, too.”

“Obviously, we’re fortunate to play in this division,” McDavid said. “A lot of teams are fortunate to play in this division. It’s a bit of a pillow fight right now. Thankful to not have lost any ground. That being said, we gotta find a way to win some games here on the road. Two big ones against Utah and Vegas. We gotta make some ground too. Good challenge ahead.”

First, to call the Pacific Division a pillow fight is to slander every stock film snippet of every sorority bedroom scene in cinema stereotype history. Division leader Anaheim would be 10th in the Eastern Conference standings, and Edmonton, five points behind the Ducks, would be 13th. For a team that has been to the Finals twice and has to struggle to stay barely above the playoff line—not to mention one with the universally-agreed-upon best player in the sport—this speaks volumes about what has happened to the Oilers in particular. The Pacific is there for the taking by anyone not located in Calgary or Vancouver, and if the Oilers somehow manage not to make the postseason (and don’t rule out that possibility), Canada’s minimal Cup hopes will be held by the spunky but lack-of-awe-inspiring Montreals.

Genuinely, the only reason nobody has made a bigger deal of Edmonton’s stasis (the Oilers have lost nine of their last 15 games) is that the Pacific is so easy to ignore en masse. The only team with any reason to feel good about itself is San Jose, and that’s because (a) they have Macklin Celebrini, and (b) they are no longer the worst team in the NHL, as they had been since the pandemic. That they are five points back of a playoff spot with 14 games left and four teams to pass (Nashville, Los Angeles, Seattle and Winnipeg) looks remarkably daunting, but last year they finished the equivalent of 24 games out of eighth. Being 12th feels like Mardi Gras with someone else covering your liquor tab.

But Edmonton? The mood is deeply and profoundly grim because people already see the Oilers wasting the twin gifts of McDavid and the currently injured Leon Draisaitl, and the mood seems grimmer inside the room than outside it. Even a notorious softie who likes everyone to be happy like Elliotte Friedman, the authoritative hockey voice for every Canadian network (they share talent up there), thinks the Oilers should have a team meeting to figure out how much they hate themselves. If nothing else, they might need to figure out if they have hit critical mass with head coach Kris Knoblauch. McDavid did not grouse about Knobs (hockey nickname rules apply here) as overtly as Draisaitl did before the Olympic break, but it may have instead been his intention to kill him with kindness extended toward Lightning (and Team Canada) coach Jon Cooper.

“They got a great system,” McDavid said. “They’re perfectly coached. They all know what they’re doing all over the ice. It’s impressive. They are a great team. They’re extremely well coached, they’re extremely well organized. They’re very, very rehearsed in everything that they do. It’s very impressive, and when you do break them down, they got a heck of a goalie to backstop them.”

Which one cannot say about any Oilers goaltender since perhaps prime Cam Talbot. Then again, if McDavid is envious, he should be reminded that the team that beat the Oilers in the last two Finals, Florida, is far worse off. This is an odd NHL season in which to rest on form, as eight of the 16 playoff teams from a year ago are not in postseason position this year, and five of those are already DOI—dead on ice. Maybe this is just the toll of more than 200 games plus and Olympics plus a Four Nations, but if the Panthers can use that as an excuse, the Oilers could as well. Excuses go over better with two Cups to back them up, however.

So, McDavid uses this unfamiliar place in the midst of one of the worst divisions in modern hockey history to try to spur his teammates into being less Canucklike and more Avalanchey in their remaining games. It should not be nearly as hard as the Oilers have been making it, to be sure. Then again, maybe McDavid has been underestimating the enervating nature of most pillow fights. You try excelling at your job with a mouth full of head bedding and see how well you do.