Oilers are starting to show their full potential as they get closer to full health

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EDMONTON — The Edmonton Oilers appear to be getting increasingly stronger by the day, as slowly improving health has fittingly led to better play.

“We’ve got a lot of good hockey players, a lot of guys who’d unfortunately missed time,” coach Kris Knoblauch said. “They’re not at their top performance. They’re not at their best right now. That’s normal because practice and playing games is important.

“As they get more time practicing, skating, being on the ice, playing high competition, they’re going to elevate their game. They’re only going to continue to get better. I certainly hope so. That’s what I anticipate.”

It took a wild third-period comeback highlighted by a tying goal that featured two separate video reviews and a winning marker 10 seconds later for the Oilers to get their first win of the playoffs. But that 7-4 victory in Game 3 on Friday means they’re now right in the mix in their series against the Los Angeles Kings, down 2-1 instead of 3-0.

That is the best news of all for the Oilers. Right behind it is that they got helpful contributions from players who were out of the lineup at the end of the season.

None was bigger, or perhaps more surprising, than Evander Kane’s performance.

Kane missed the entire regular season after abdominal and knee injuries and was pedestrian in his 2024-25 debut in Game 2. He said he felt far more comfortable in Game 3, and it showed. Kane had that double-reviewed tying goal and was instrumental on the forecheck before assisting on Connor Brown’s first tally of the game. He was impactful.

“He’s a big piece for us,” Oilers forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins said. “He plays that physical game. He’s in their face all the time, every shift. He has a nose around the net, too.”

Evander Kane ties it for the Oilers! 👏 pic.twitter.com/uXlQ3Il6Uj

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) April 26, 2025

It goes beyond Kane.

Only John Klingberg played less hockey than Kane this season among those on the Oilers roster. Klingberg signed with the team in January after a gruelling recovery from a double hip resurfacing procedure that had kept him out of NHL action since Nov. 11, 2023.

His last three months have been filled with stops and starts. He made his first appearance as an Oiler on Jan. 30, the first of five games before the league paused for the 4 Nations Face-Off. Klingberg said the timing couldn’t have been worse, but he tried to make the best of the break by skating with the WHL’s Edmonton Oil Kings.

He got into five more contests before blocking a shot on the inside of his left foot on March 4. That caused him to miss 10 games before he returned to the lineup March 27 in Seattle. The way he describes it, the area “blew up” afterward because of an infection. That sidelined him again.

The Oilers were forced to place him on LTIR for cap reasons amid a myriad of injuries earlier this month. But Klingberg skated hard in the week prior to the playoffs. He declared himself available before Game 1, adding he felt better than he had since his hip procedure.

Klingberg replaced Josh Brown for Game 2 and has provided a boost to the back end.

“This is the best I’ve moved so far on the ice,” Klingberg said.

Klingberg had an assist and played 18:48 on Wednesday. He was arguably the Oilers’ best defenceman that night. He followed that up with 17:49 of ice time in Game 3 on Friday, mostly on a pair with Jake Walman.

“He’s playing great,” defenceman Evan Bouchard said. “He’s contributing on both ends.”

Knoblauch said Troy Stecher has been medically cleared from an undisclosed injury suffered in Edmonton’s third-last regular-season game in Winnipeg on April 13. Should the Oilers insert Stecher into the lineup for Game 4 on Sunday, Ty Emberson is more likely to be removed than Klingberg.

Aside from Kane and Klingberg, the Oilers are getting gradual improvement from Trent Frederic, who played one game since Feb. 25 before the playoffs because of an ankle injury. He’s been in the bottom six since the third period of Game 1 but appeared to be skating better in Game 3 than earlier in the series.

Throw in progress from Walman, Leon Draisaitl and Zach Hyman, who all missed time to close out the season, and the Oilers are in the best position they’ve been in from a health standpoint since before the trade deadline.

“It’s a bit of an adjustment,” Walman said of his experience sitting out the final six games of the regular season, “but it’s not hard to get up for these games. You don’t really have to motivate yourself.

“You kind of forget about the things that are ailing you when you’re that jacked up and ready to go.”

Things aren’t perfect, of course. The Oilers are still without arguably their best defenceman, Mattias Ekholm, who’s out for at least the first round with a lower-body injury.

They’ve allowed 16 goals in three games against the Kings without him, the last of which saw Walman get burned by Trevor Moore before the winger cut in and beat Calvin Pickard. That goal happened just eight seconds after Brown tied the score in the second period.

“Those high-scoring games are not what we’re shooting for as a D corps,” Walman said. “It’s just a goal that we’re setting for ourselves to keep the score down and play good defence.”

Things are looking up, though. Brown said the Oilers were a bit out of sorts in Game 1 as they reintegrated a few players back into the lineup. Game 2 saw Kane and Klingberg added.

Perhaps it’s no surprise then that Game 3 was their best effort.

Sure, there was an increased sense of desperation considering the prospects of facing a 3-0 chasm in the series. It sure didn’t hurt that it was their second attempt with a nearly full lineup. “Cohesion,” as Knoblauch noted, was apparent.

“Guys are getting healthy and getting some more time on the ice,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “We did a better job (in Game 3).”

This is a welcome change for Knoblauch, who, along with his coaching staff, found it “difficult” to cobble together lineups to close out the regular season. The Oilers played a skater short in four of their nine regular-season contests in April because of all the injuries and cap ramifications. Connor McDavid was also sidelined with a lower-body injury.

The situation is much clearer now, plus there’s no salary cap in the playoffs. What’s difficult now, Knoblauch said, is deciding who should be scratched. Regular forwards Jeff Skinner, Kasperi Kapanen and Max Jones are on the outside, and a defenceman could be added to that group as early as Sunday.

That’s a better problem to have.

As a former NHL coach told The Athletic ahead of the playoffs, perhaps stating the obvious, “If the Oilers were healthy, they’d be a hell of a hockey club.”

Well, those Oilers are getting ever closer to full health — and they’re just now starting to show what they’re all about.

“We’re a confident group,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “We know what we’re capable of. We’ve got a lot of good pieces. It’s about bringing it shift after shift. We did a better job of that (in Game 3). We’ve got some room to grow.”

(Photo: Andy Devlin / NHLI via Getty Images)

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