BLOG: Hyman, Oilers must form new identity despite last season's trip to Final

EDMONTON, AB – Zach Hyman rolled into Rogers Place for the first on-ice skate of Training Camp on Thursday morning a bit behind schedule, but with good reason.

The Hymans celebrated the birth of their third son, Cam, on Wednesday to bring the total amount of players in their family to five. After Thursday's skate, Zach echoed his teammate Mattias Ekholm’s words from last season that they’re going from ‘man-to-man coverage’ to ‘zone defence’ in their house, as the kids now outnumber the adults by a 3-2 margin.

“It's one of the best days of your life,” Hyman told the media on Thursday.

The joy couldn't be greater in the Hyman household at this moment. That feeling is following the winger to this year's Training Camp as he and the Oilers try to move from last season's disappointment in the Stanley Cup Final by getting back there in '24-25 with a new-look Oilers team that boasts much of the same firepower along with the addition of a few high-impact players.

Hyman mentioned he had plenty of run-ins with the Oil Country faithful in the weeks following their Game 7 defeat to the Florida Panthers, who told him about their fond memories of last season's run and their excitement for the coming season.

Those are all aspects that Hyman is looking forward to channelling during the upcoming year, hoping to embed that exuberance into the Oilers' locker room for this coming campaign despite the unfortunate outcome last season.

“Funny enough, it's always positive," he said. "It's never negative in the sense that we didn't win. It's always, ‘Thank you for giving us such an exciting run and something to cheer for’ and ‘We're so super excited about this year.’

"That's really been the message, and I think the key is the excitement for this year. I think that's what you take away."

Despite showing up late to Thursday's skate (with 'late' being a debated by both Hyman and his teammates), the first-time 50-goal scorer with the Blue & Orange last season was still able to scrape into the locker room a few minutes ahead of their scheduled ice time before he grabbed his gear and got out there with his teammates for an on-ice session focused on preparing the Oilers for the start of the regular season on Oct. 9 against the Winnipeg Jets.

But the happy situation for the Hymans wasn’t going to stop Zach’s teammates from giving him a bit of grief about his late arrival in the dressing room before the ‘congratulations’ began pouring in for the now father of three boys.

“I was just on time,” Hyman said jokingly to the media. “9:30 practice. I was in at 9:27 and we were just about to start, but apparently, I wasn't good. It was funny. The guys were giving me a little grief. We said 9:30 and it was 9:27. I was good. So I like to take my time.”

Following last season’s run to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, the Oilers players who were part of the journey were given a shortened summer to process the defeat before the cycle began anew in 2024-25 with the start of Training Camp.

The winger admitted that moving past the disappointment of losing in last year’s Final must happen almost immediately, but in truth, the feeling will never fully go away.

But it will have to happen fast—a new season with plenty of new challenges for the Blue and Orange is about to start, but the locker room still has the same expectations.

“I think it has to happen right away. It's always going to be with you," Hyman said. "Even for guys no longer on this team, you’re always going to have that feeling because you were so close. But I think having learned from years past, you must put the past behind you. You have to move on.

“It’s a fresh year. Everybody starts at zero. New teams always come up and surprise people, and standings change. Playoff teams change, and you want to be one of the teams in the mix. And obviously, we have pretty high aspirations.”

Hyman noted that it will be important for this season's group to figure out its new identity during Training Camp and over Edmonton's eight-game pre-season schedule, which begins on Sunday at Rogers Place against Winnipeg.

Though there's a healthy amount of returning players from last year's roster who dressed for Game 7 against the Florida Panthers, a number of new faces at Camp will help determine the club's new identity, which begins taking shape in the first few skates of season. But Hyman mentioned that a team usually needs a whole season, let alone a full Training Camp, to figure it all out.

"I think a lot of times, the themes and who you are as a team develop over the course of an 82-game season," he said. "It's hard to figure out what your identity is right away. I think every team changes from year to year, so your identity in last year isn't necessarily going to be your identity this year.

"I think Training Camp is all about figuring out what type of team you are and every team adapts quite a bit through a season, so you just want to get off to a good start and feel good about the group and yourself going into the year."

Hyman is coming off an incredible season where he reached the 50-goal mark for the first time in his career, scoring 54 times in 80 regular-season contests (77 points) before finishing as the leading goalscorer in the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs with 16 goals.

To start off Training Camp, the 32-year-old has a chance to immediately renew his chemistry with Connor McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins after the trio formed one of the most influential lines in the NHL last season.

The winger isn't letting last season's individual success overcloud his ambitions of being whatever teammate he has to be to assist in Edmonton's push to get back into the playoffs and finish the job by winning the last game of the season in the Stanley Cup Final.

"No pressure," he said. "No one expected me to score 50 goals last year. I've never been a guy who says this year, 'I want to score this amount of goals, this amount of assists and this amount of points,' because every year is different. And I think for me personally, it's always how can I help the team win and what I can do to help the team win; how can I be a better version of myself and whether that's scoring more or whether that's doing something else, that's something that you figure out along the way.

"You figure out your role, and I'm pretty confident what my role is here, and I'm excited to continue to build off of last year, and I think the word of the day is probably just excitement."