BLOG: Oilers taking the patient approach to upcoming NHL season

EDMONTON, AB – Don’t get too far ahead of yourselves.

It’s still only early September.

The official start of Training Camp is still over one week away for the Edmonton Oilers. After that, there will be another hard regular season filled with plenty of unknowns for them to navigate their way through in order to earn themselves another chance at competing for another championship in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

If you’re the Blue & Orange, your sights aren’t straying from the goal of getting back to the Stanley Cup Final, where they fell one game short of lifting the Cup in Game 7 against the Florida Panthers. But the process of getting back for the Oilers this season begins with having a better start to the regular season, hoping that a less-intensive approach in September will pay dividends during the year and keep some extra energy in the reservoir for when they need it in April, May and June.

“I think lots of guys are here already,” Leon Draisaitl said following Monday’s informal skate at the Downtown Community Arena. “Obviously, there's some excitement to get going here, but you do have to pace yourself a little bit. We saw it last year and it didn't work in our favour. I think we’ve got a great approach and a great mindset in here. We'll make sure we're ready to go.”

"I'd be lying if I said that I wouldn't like another three weeks of working out just to catch up on some things. But at the end of the day, we're all professionals. We all take care of our bodies, we take care of ourselves and I’m excited to get going.

"The itch is coming back a little bit, so I’m just excited to be back and get going with the guys.”

Last offseason, the Oilers returned in force after Labour Day to take part in captain's skates – an early call to Edmonton made by captain Connor McDavid and the leadership group to get the group ready to hit the ground running for their season opener against the Vancouver Canucks.

The early start for the club didn't translate into positive results to begin the season, instead resulting in a 2-9-1 record for the Blue & Orange that required them to play catch-up in the standings until the All-Star Break – a task made a lot easier thanks to their franchise-record 16-game win streak from Dec. 21, 2023 to Jan. 17, 2024.

Draisaitl proclaimed after Monday's skate at the DCA that the Oilers aren't looking too far ahead by thinking they can win the Stanley Cup in early September, but instead are using their experiences from last year to take a better approach to the first 82 games of the year before they start thinking about playoffs.

" I think our focus Is on the regular season right now," he said. "I think it's much too early to talk about the playoffs right now. We know where we want to end up at the end of the season. I think everybody knows that, but, you know, we have to give ourselves a chance to get there first and that's most important. That's our priority – getting off to a good start. A better start than last year would be a good first step."

Starting the season off strongly for the Oilers begins by figuring out the club's new identity, which will be formed with the help of a number of new additions that include forwards Viktor Arvidsson and Jeff Skinner, who could both find themselves on the German superstar's wings to begin the year on the second line.

"You have to create an identity, right? We're not the same team as last year," Draisaitl explained. "There are a lot of the same pieces, but every team creates its own identity, its own look, and its own way of approaching and playing the game. So like I said, there's a lot of the same pieces and we definitely want to play a similar style of hockey, but we're going to be our own team.

"We're not going to have anything to do with the team last year. We're going to try and be even better."

Draisaitl has been hard at work during the past two informal skates in Edmonton trying to get his legs under him from a short offseason and build some early chemistry with his two new teammates. The German has gotten a lot of first-hand glimpses of Arvidsson from the opposing bench during Pacific Division battles over the years between the Oilers and Los Angeles Kings, citing the Swedish forward as "super dangerous".

"I was always a little extra cautious when he was on the ice; really good hockey sense, really hard-working guy who knows how to play the game," he said. "I'm really, really excited to get to know him a little bit and create some chemistry with him. I think we could be a really good pair."

Fellow off-season signing Jeff Skinner hasn't spent any of his 1,006 career NHL games in the playoffs, but is ready to buy into the message that's being delivered by the leadership so he can have a fast start to his own tenure in Oil Country.

"Yeah, there's definitely some excitement," said the Toronto, Ont. product. "I think everyone saw the run they went on last year and I think you’ve got a lot of guys that are hungry to repeat that run.

"I'm just looking to be a part of it and just try and be a piece of the puzzle."