Edmonton Oilers lean into age, experience in NHL playoffs

By Canadian Press on May 8, 2025.

LAS VEGAS — The oldest team left in Stanley Cup contention leans into its experience to navigate tense moments, and there’s been plenty of them.

The Edmonton Oilers with an average age of 30.6 years, and in its seventh playoff series in the last two seasons, feel at home in the eye of the storm.

They’ve already been down two games to start a series, which was the case in the first round against the Los Angeles Kings.

The Oilers then became the first NHL team to win five straight playoff games coming from behind, including Game 1 in the second round against the Vegas Golden Knights.

“This team is built for the playoffs,” Edmonton forward Zach Hyman said.

“We have experience to win games in a lot of different ways and a lot of untraditional ways.”

That’s not to say the Oilers were comfortable with a slow start to this post-season.

“I guess we realized it’s playoff time,” defenceman Evan Bouchard said. “There’s no time to really, you know, screw around. You lose, you go home.

“We know what we have in this room. We know it doesn’t come too often that you get a championship team, so you’ve got to take advantage of it.”

Edmonton scored the first goal of a game just once in their first seven.

“Definitely not a recipe that we want to get used to, but we are used to it now. We’re comfortable in those positions, which is a good thing,” Bouchard said.

“We have belief in each other that we are going to come back and if we can start with the lead, then we know we can hang on to that too.”

The Oilers reached Game 7 of last year’s Stanley Cup final before falling 2-1 to the Florida Panthers.

“We’ve still got that feeling from last year,” Bouchard said. “We want to get back to where we were.”

Edmonton had more than half a dozen skaters who missed time down the regular-season stretch, or longer, trying to reintegrate themselves into the lineup to start the post-season.

That accounted somewhat for falling behind 2-0 in the first-round against the Los Angeles Kings.

“It was definitely clunky first two games there in L.A,. but I thought we’ve responded since,” captain Connor McDavid said.

“Our game’s just building. I know that’s weird to say in the middle of the playoffs, but when you don’t have a ton of runway . . . we’re putting the pieces together and building our game as we go.”

Corey Perry, who turns 40 on May 16, helps raise Edmonton’s average age over the Toronto Maple Leafs at 30.2.

Florida (29.8), Dallas (29.7), Vegas (29.3), Washington (29), Carolina (28.8) and Winnipeg (28.4) round out the eight teams still playing for the Cup.

“We know how to play the right way, we know to win hockey games,” Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl said. “It’s just a matter of doing it more consistent than all the other teams.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 8, 2025.

Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press