Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers are running out of chances with each other

The Edmonton Oilers and Connor McDavid may have missed their best chance to win together.

The clock is ticking for the Edmonton Oilers, and with each passing second the noise is getting a little louder. It reached a deafening level on Thursday night when they were eliminated from the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs in the first round, dropping a 5-2 Game 6 decision to the Anaheim Ducks.

It is not just that the Oilers lost that is concerning.

It is not even necessarily how they lost (which is perhaps even more concerning).

We will get into all of that.

It is the fact they lost, and were dominated, while their best and most important player — Connor McDavid — seems to be growing tired of the direction things are going with the team.

When McDavid signed his most recent contract extension with the team this past summer, it was an eye-opening move. Not only was it for the exact same salary cap hit as his previous contract, essentially making it a pay DECREASE under a rising salary cap, but it was only a two-year deal.

There was, and is, no other way to look at that other than him issuing a challenge to management to get its act together and fix the issues that have perpetually plagued the team during his tenure.

Based on this season’s result, and McDavid’s reaction to it, it is not hard to conclude that he does not like the early returns.

Following Thursday’s loss, McDavid was blunt in his assessment of the season, saying the Oilers were “an average team with high expectations,” and when you are in that position you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

He is not wrong.

This team should not be average.

He did not sign up and take a discount over the next two seasons to play on an average team.

I am not going to totally absolve McDavid for blame in the Oilers’ loss in this series, and you shouldn’t either. He was not at his best, scoring just one goal in the six games (he did add five assists). He was clearly playing through some sort of injury, made even more obvious by the fact he was questionable for Game 5 of the series, but even with that being the case he still has another level he did not get to in this series.

The thing is, as true as that might be, it shouldn’t result in the Oilers getting their asses kicked all over the ice for six games.

(And they absolutely got their asses kicked. They were outplayed in every single phase of the game, from top-to-bottom.)

Every team that wins a Stanley Cup has to get through a series or an extended stretch of games where its best player goes quiet on the scoreboard. It might be the first round, the Final round, or a round in between. But it always happens. Pretending it doesn’t just because the player in question ended up with their name on the Stanley Cup doesn’t change that reality. That is where having a deep, well-rounded team comes into play. I will keep shouting this from the rooftops as often as I need to, but production in the NHL is not consistent. Even for the best players. They run hot and cold, and typically score their goals in bunches. When you score your goals in bunches, you sometimes go a few games without them. That is where the depth has to come in.

The Oilers never have that with McDavid. They certainly did not have it this season, as the team’s performance when neither of their two stars was on the ice was worse than it has ever been during their careers in Edmonton, while they somehow managed to make an already bad goaltending situation even worse for the future.

It’s an awful look for the front office, and given who they hitched their wagon to I am not convinced anything is going to get better in the short-term.

For most of McDavid’s career the Oilers have gone through a revolving door of recycled, big-name hockey men running the ship whose best days were already fading away in the rear-view mirror when they brought them on, and who never truly adapted to the evolving game and life in a salary capped league. All of them have their messy fingerprints all over this roster.

The latest incarnation of this is Stan Bowman, a long-time NHL executive who was born on third base due to his name, as well as the fact he took over a ready-made winner in Chicago that was almost entirely built by the previous two general managers. When he crossed home plate, he was celebrated as if he hit a home run. When the time came for him to step into the batter’s box and build the roster and put his own stamp on it, it was a spectacular, stunning failure. Chicago didn’t fall apart just because its best players got older. Bowman accelerated that collapse through his own incompetence.

That incompetence has already been on display in his brief tenure in Edmonton.

What makes it even more baffling is this team wasn’t that far from reaching its goal of a championship.

It played in back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals the past two seasons. That is something. And it is impressive. But that only magnifies the shortcomings of this season, and in previous seasons, even more. Those Stanley Cup Final runs were largely and primarily driven by McDavid and Draisaitl putting flawed rosters on their backs and dragging it to that point.

They were close to getting there.

It shouldn’t have taken a lot to get them the final yards to the finish line.

The hard part was already done.

They not only failed as an organization, they went backwards.

Let’s talk about that, and try to ponder how Edmonton fixes this before it runs out of chances with its generational superstar. If that is even possible.