A recent article by Sportsnet’s Marc Spector details how Edmonton Oilers centre Connor McDavid has changed his approach to training this offseason. He interviewed McDavid for the article, which includes several interesting quotes from Edmonton’s captain that provide insight into his line of thinking.
McDavid has clearly taken some lessons from Edmonton’s wild ride in 2023-24, which saw the Oilers get off to a dreadful start and change coaches from Jay Woodcroft to Kris Knobaluch before authoring one of the greatest turnarounds in sports history. They climbed from 14th place in the Western Conference at American Thanksgiving to finish the season with the second-best record in the Pacific Division and advance to the playoffs, where the Oilers won three rounds to advance to the Stanley Cup Final.
Ultimately, the Oilers fell to the Florida Panthers, four games to three, in the best-of-seven championship series. They lost Game 7 to the Panthers by a score of 2-1 at Amerant Bank Arena on June 24.
Oilers Started Early Last Year
Last year, McDavid assembled his teammates in Edmonton early, two weeks before the start of training camp, to participate in informal skates that continued until camp opened.
“I think it says a lot about where our group is at, everybody is dialed in, everybody is super-motivated, everybody is determined and everybody is in it together,” McDavid said at the time.
The captain’s initiative was widely praised by fans and pundits alike. After the Oilers had been eliminated in the second round of the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs, they were clearly driven to do whatever it took to get to the next level.
But maybe there was such a thing as too much, because the Oilers’ 2023-24 campaign got off to a disastrous start. At 2-9-1, they tied for their fewest points ever through the first 12 games of a season. After 18 games, with a record of 5-12-1, they were 10 points back of a playoff position.
“Definitely, last year taught us that you can’t win the Cup in September and October,” McDavid said in the Sportsnet article. “But you can certainly put yourself in a tough spot.”
McDavid’s New Way of Thinking
This year, even though there are already some Oilers in Edmonton, McDavid isn’t gathering the team for skates in advance of training camp. That aligns with what seems to be an overall shift in philosophy for the 27-year-old centre, who, as Spector notes in his article, “has matured into a player who is willing to listen to his body a little bit more.”
McDavid is quoted as saying, “I went with a little bit of a different strategy this summer. In years past, it’s just been very volume heavy, very go, go, go. Throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks. That strategy, as well as it’s worked for me, I think about the beginning of last year. I was just very tired and fatigued from a long summer of training, and was not feeling very good on the ice. And it translated.”
McDavid also observed that players don’t need to peak for the start of training camp; they need to peak for the start of the regular season.
While he was working hard off the ice this summer, McDavid added, he took some time away from the rink and didn’t hit the ice until August. “Five great weeks on the ice, and I’m feeling good and ready to roll again,” he said in the article.
Oilers Could Benefit From Better Start
While the Oilers did ultimately go on a run to the 2024 Stanley Cup Final, after finishing the regular season with an incredible 44-15-1 record over their final 64 games, it’s fair to wonder how things would have been different had Edmonton not struggled so mightily for the first six weeks of its schedule.
The Oilers had to expend an extraordinary amount of energy just to battle back. And even then, they could only get high enough in the standings to have home-ice advantage for the opening round of the postseason. That meant being in some incredibly challenging situations in the playoffs, including having to go seven games against the Vancouver Canucks in Round 2.
If the Oilers finished higher in the standings, they may not have needed to play so many games on their road to the Stanley Cup Final, thus conserving their already precious energy, and they would have had home ice advantage for Game 7 against the Panthers. And if that’s the case, maybe Game 7 ends with the Oilers as champions.
Suffice it to say, it’s not at all far-fetched to think that even just winning a few more games in October can make the difference between celebrating with the Stanley Cup and watching the opposition hoist hockey’s holy grail.
Oilers Have Easiest Strength of Schedule
It’s also worth noting that the Oilers have an ostensibly favourable schedule. According to Canada Sports Betting’s Strength of Schedule (SOS) metric, which is calculated by averaging the regular season point totals of each team’s opponents, Edmonton has the easiest schedule of all 32 NHL teams in 2024-25, with an SOS of just 90.4. By comparison, the Columbus Blue Jackets are calculated as having the NHL’s most challenging schedule in 2024-25, with an SOS of 93.2, and the Panthers are in the middle of the pack, with a 91.7 SOS.
Granted, the SOS is calculated based on last season’s point totals, but the stars seem to be aligned for the Oilers to have an incredible regular season that puts them in the best position possible for the playoffs.
And with a different approach, McDavid hopes to put himself and the Oilers in the best position possible for the 2024-25 regular season.
