It’s Saturday afternoon, the Young Stars Tournament is on in Penticton, and we’re less than a month away from the start of the 2024-25, which has me excited to sit down and write about the Edmonton Oilers again. We’re getting close to showtime, people, and I am thrilled that hockey is back.
I’M NERVOUS ABOUT DARNELL NURSE
When word broke that Darnell Nurse is likely to miss some time in camp while he recovers from injury, my first thought was what happened with Mattias Ekholm a year ago. If you remember, Ekholm missed all of training camp and the preseason, which put him behind his peers by at least a month or so. So, when it comes to Nurse having an injury at the same time of the season, it’s hard not to look back at what happened a year ago and worry about how far this injury will put Darryl behind.
I know that there are a bunch of people reading this who are probably thrilled Nurse is expected to miss some time, but I am not one of them. Regardless of what I think about his contract, there’s little doubt in my mind how vital Nurse is to the Oilers’ blue line, especially in its current state. Even though we don’t know much about what Darnell is battling right now, I’m concerned about how long he’ll be forced to sit out and how far behind that will put him from everyone who has the luxury of using the pre-season to get ready. We saw it with Ekholm — these tune-up days are important.
If this Nurse injury has him out for any significant length of time, my concern is how long it will take him to catch up. The longer that is, the more likely it is that the Oilers will struggle in the early weeks of the season, just like they did last year. Then again, I also know that I could be making a mountain out of a molehill, but that’s where my mind goes without information about what’s actually going on. Here’s hoping whatever Darryl is battling right now is nothing major because the Oilers will need him.
EVANDER KANE IS OUT
I think a lot of us expected Evander Kane to miss a significant chunk of time this season, but the news that he’ll be getting hernia surgery over the next couple of weeks made it all the more real. According to the Cleveland Clinic, recovering from sports hernia surgery can take anywhere from 6-12 weeks with an added caveat that recovering from the procedure can be a slow and steady process. With that timeline in mind, where does that put us with Kane?
If we assume he’s getting surgery before the end of September and the recovery will take three months, Kane would be available to come back at some point early in the new year. But is that the plan? I don’t know much about anything, but what I do know is that the table is set for the Oilers to pull off some Vegas-style cap shenanigans if they choose to play their cards that way. Do you know how much cap space that would add to the books by the time the trade deadline rolls around? It’s just something I’m thinking about, is all.
CAN THE BLUES BE A NEW SIDE QUEST RIVAL?
I think most people expect the St. Louis Blues to be pretty bad this season — I am certainly one of them — but that doesn’t mean I don’t also think that the Oilers could have a fun little rivalry going with them this season. Obviously, the Blues threw the offer sheet grenade Edmonton’s way earlier in the summer, but then we got this quote from Robert Thomas that almost made Connor and Leon seem like they were pouting about it.
Now, I fully admit that this is probably much adieu about nothing and that Connor nor Leon probably care that much, but the wrestling fan in me likes to think this summer’s shenanigans could be the spark for a new side quest rivalry. Even though the Oilers and Blues only play three times this season, I’m hoping that those games can be a little bit spicier than they might have otherwise been. By no means am I expecting an Oilers/Flames or Oilers/Canucks situation, but I also don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume our boys will want to put the Blues in their place a little bit.
THE YOUNG STARS TOURNAMENT
From my side of the computer screen, the Young Stars Tournament is always the unofficial start to the new NHL season. Even though the hype isn’t anywhere near the heights we saw during the Taylor Hall, Nuge, McDavid tournaments, I still have a good time keeping an eye on our new shiny toys in the hopes that some of them will turn into the stars we’ll be writing about here on the site in the coming years.
The Oilers’ rookies may not have started out the tournament all that well — getting shutout is never where you want to be — but the bright side is that the 2-0 opening game gave me a few laughs because of how seriously a handful of Canucks fans took the result. Edmonton is so rent free in their minds these days that even having a win in a rookie tournament is enough to have them crawling out of their holes, and if that’s not a hilarious start to the pre-season activities then I don’t know what is.
