Here come the Oilers (in a good way this time)

They were always going to be fine.

Good morning and Happy Monday. Today we take a look at…

• The Edmonton Oilers resurgence … which always seemed obvious.

• More vigilante justice in the NHL.

• I took a week away from the SubStack to help give myself a small break at times. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Here come the Oilers!

Over the years the hashtag #herecometheoilers has been a hockey Twitter meme to poke fun at the Edmonton Oilers for doing something completely inept to further push themselves toward oblivion. Whenever that hashtag makes an appearance, you know something stupid just happened in one of their games. Or with their front office. Or with the organization as a whole.

That is not the case here. It is the exact opposite, actually. This is about the Oilers recent resurgence to rescue themselves from the NHL’s basement and rapidly play their way back into playoff contention in the Western Conference.

This should not be a surprise. The signs for this were always there, even when they appeared to be at rock bottom with a 2-9-1 record to start the year in their first 12 games. All they needed was one major change to bring the whole thing together and change the results and reward their process.

And no, it wasn’t the coaching chance to replace Jay Woodcroft with Kris Knoblauch 13 games into the season.

It was to finally stop playing Jack Campbell and turn the net over to somebody that could at least give them passable goaltending.

This might seem like an oversimplification of the problem and the process, and there will be anecdotal arguments against it, but this was always the inevitable conclusion here.

I know the overall record is still bad. But with wins in nine of their past 12 games and Connor McDavid going absolutely bonkers offensively this is very clearly a team that is starting to steamroll in the right direction.

Let’s get into it.