The Oilers just might be good enough to celebrate the present for a change

For his next trick, the fabulous Connor McDavid just might bring the Edmonton Oilers kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Yep, McDavid is that good.

That’s not to say the Oilers are a backward organization. Nothing could be further from the truth, and that gorgeous rink the taxpayers built for them in downtown Edmonton is certainly in the conversation every time the subject of best NHL arena comes up.

It’s more a case that when it comes to reference points, for a long time now Oiler fans and media have been stuck somewhere between 1984 and 1990, the start point and end point of the NHL’s last true dynasty. If an Oilers team isn’t tough enough, it’s because it doesn’t have Dave Semenko riding shotgun. If an Edmonton goalie doesn’t come through in the clutch, he’s not a money goalie like Grant Fuhr. If the Oilers score six or seven goals in a game, they supposedly remind everyone for one night of the great offensive squads led by Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Paul Coffey and Jari Kurri.

Every team, of course, likes to embrace the best parts of its past. It’s natural. But at a certain point, the past becomes so distant it starts to lose relevance. In the case of the Oilers, comparing the challenges of a 21-team league when everyone used wooden sticks to the current swollen 32-team NHL in which fighting is essentially extinct and everyone can shoot the puck 120 kilometres an hour started to lose relevance quite some time ago.

Those Edmonton teams that featured Gretzky et al were so uniquely entertaining and so high-powered that to some they were always going to be the gold standard for the Oilers.

Until, possibly, now.

That’s not to anoint the Oilers as favourites to win the 2023 Stanley Cup. As of today, they don’t even know if they’re going to finish first, second or third in their division. Moreover, the modern NHL is so tightly packed, with truly great teams no longer possible because of the salary cap, that nobody, not even this year’s extraordinary Boston Bruins, are likely to completely dominate the playoffs like the 1985 Oilers (three defeats in four rounds).

With those caveats out of the way, however, you would be entirely forgiven if, based on where the NHL sits in the first week of April, you were to look at the Oilers as beautifully positioned to go all the way this spring.

Perhaps its just recency bias. A 6-0 clobbering of the truly awful Anaheim Ducks on Saturday night meant the Oilers are now 9-0-1 in their last 10 games. The victory clinched a playoff berth for the fourth straight year and, with five games left and the team already at 99 points, likely its second straight season with more than 100 points.

The tandem of McDavid and Leon Draisaitl is the most potent 1-2 tandem the league has seen since the days when Mario Lemieux skated alongside Jaromir Jagr in Pittsburgh. McDavid, the certain Hart Trophy winner, is having a season for the ages with 62 goals. The only player within shouting distance of him in the scoring race is Draisaitl, who notched a hat rick against the Ducks to hit the 50-goal mark. Thirty of those goals by the best German player ever to skate in the NHL have come on the power play, and the Edmonton extra-strength unit is easily the best in the NHL, clicking at better than 32 per cent this season.

The knock against the Oilers as recently as two springs ago when they were shocked by Winnipeg in the first round of the post-season was that they were essentially a one-line team. That isn’t the case any longer. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has blossomed at age 29, and is sixth in NHL scoring. He’ll almost certainly soon give Edmonton its third 100-plus points player.

Ex-Leaf Zach Hyman has 34 goals, and Evander Kane continues to demonstrate that Edmonton may be the one NHL city in which he can actually reach his potential. He was brilliant in the playoffs last spring, and this year has 15 goals in 36 games and gives the Oilers the type of true power forward that has become rare across the NHL. That top-six group allowed management to finally cut bait on the frustrating Jesse Puljujärvi.

Like their ancestors of the 1980s, the Oilers are not statistically great defensively. But even that statement comes with two asterisks. Rookie goalie Stuart Skinner appears to have matured into a true No. 1 goalie over the course of the season.

Mattias Ekholm, meanwhile, is proving to be the best single trade-deadline acquisition of any NHL club. He’s a plus-18 in 16 games, not the most reliable stat, but he seems to have added the savvy and confidence on the blue line that the team needed while taking some of the heat off Darnell Nurse and Evan Bouchard.

Coming out of the weaker of the two NHL conferences means the Oilers are likely to face more manageable playoff opponents than a team like Boston. As of today, who’s better than Edmonton in the West?

Producing a special playoff run with special players, of course, has always been the only real way to get the Oilers unstuck from the 1980s. Yes, they made a Cup run in 2006, but that was more of a fluke. Ales Hemsky was the leading scorer, after all. Fernando Pisani was the playoff hero.

This year’s Edmonton team, meanwhile, is as close to the Harlem Globetrotters as any NHL team can be anymore. McDavid and Draisaitl are wildly entertaining, a nightly highlight reel.

It’s almost enough already to make Oiler fans move on the from the team’s wonderful past. As with the other 15 playoff qualifiers, the true hard work soon begins. The Oilers simply have to commence the journey trying to ignore a lot more nosy ghosts looking over their shoulders than everyone else.

Damien Cox is a former Star sports reporter who is a current freelance contributing columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @DamoSpin

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