Safe to say that Edmonton Oilers superstar Connor McDavid is not pleased with how he and the rest of the Oilers ended their 2025-26 season.
After back-to-back seasons making it all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, the Oilers were eliminated in a six-game, first-round series by the Anaheim Ducks. The club held its annual end-of-season media availabilities on Saturday, and many of the team’s top players, including McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, delivered a brutal reality check about the direction of the team.
“I am concerned,” Draisaitl said. “A little bit of that leads into us players. We didn’t do a good enough job of properly winning games. I don’t like using the terminology of ‘taking the regular season serious,’ because we do, but I think you really have to form these moments, get comfortable in these moments, and we didn’t do that this year. It ended up showing in the first round here. I am concerned because we’re not trending in the right direction. We’ve taken big steps backwards.”
McDavid echoed Draisaitl’s sentiments and reaffirmed his assertion from Thursday night that the Oilers were an “average” team the whole season, and that when you have high expectations, average isn’t good enough.
“Yeah, I feel the same way (as Draisaitl),” McDavid said. “It’s only a couple of days ago I made those comments. Obviously, I feel the same as I did a couple of days ago, and I agree with Leon that the organization as a whole has taken a step back. That starts with me, it starts with Leon. We can all be better, and we all need to be better.”
McDavid scored just one goal in the six-game series defeat, likely hampered by a foot/ankle fracture that he suffered in Game 2. Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch revealed that the club’s captain was playing through immense pain, finishing the series as a minus-8, tied for the second-worst plus/minus in the first round.
The play in which McDavid suffered the injury was a seemingly innocuous collision with teammate Mattias Ekholm, where the two got their legs tangled trying to defend a Ducks rush.
“It’s not easy, guys playing through things,” McDavid said. “It sucks, really. But everyone does it, and we needed to find a way to be better, and we didn’t, I didn’t.”
Ahead of the season, McDavid signed a two-year, $25 million extension with the Oilers, taking a massive discount to try to help the team add around him and win a Stanley Cup. With that extension kicking in next year, the Oilers quickly seem to be on the clock before he fits unrestricted free agency.
“In what world do you have the best player in the world on your team and you’re not looking to win?” Draisaitl said. “We need to be better. We have to be better. There is no way around it. He’s signed for two more years, and god knows where that goes. We have two years. We have to get significantly better.”
McDavid finished the 2025-26 campaign with a league-leading 138 points (48g, 90a) in 82 games. Given his megastar status and the Oilers’ flailing out in the first round, the soon-to-be 30-year-old will be peppered with questions about his future. For now, he claims not to have any intention of going anywhere else.
“I want to win, and I want to win here in Edmonton,” McDavid said. “That’s my focus.”
The Oilers head into the offseason with the 18th-most projected salary cap space ($16.5 million) in the NHL. While they have most of their top pieces, like McDavid, Draisaitl, and defenseman Evan Bouchard, locked down, a large portion of their roster heads into the summer without contracts.
Edmonton’s long list of free agents includes Adam Henrique, Jason Dickinson, Jack Roslovic, Kasperi Kapanen, Max Jones, Colton Dach, Curtis Lazar, Connor Murphy, Spencer Stastney, and Connor Ingram. Seven of those players, including Ingram, the team’s starting netminder, played in their Game 6 loss to the Ducks.
The Oilers also do not have a ton of draft capital or top prospects to facilitate trades, as they don’t have a first-round pick in the next two drafts, nor do they have a second-round pick in the 2028 or 2029 NHL Draft.
