Stan Bowman has pushed all of the wrong buttons for Oilers, and now it is being put to the test

The injury to Leon Draisaitl could further highlight the Oilers flaws.

Big news in the Western Conference playoff race on Tuesday when the Edmonton Oilers announced that superstar forward Leon Draisaitl is going to miss the remainder of the regular season due to a lower-body injury. This is significant news not only because Draisaitl is one of the best players in hockey, but also because so much of what the Oilers do is almost entirely dependent on Draisaitl and Connor McDavid carrying the team.

The Oilers have always been pretty top-heavy with McDavid and Draisaitl doing most of the heavy-lifting, but it has been even more true this season as the depth around them has performed about as poorly as it ever has during their careers.

The numbers are just … ugly. Just look at this nonsense during 5-on-5 play with and without McDavid and Draisaitl on the ice.

They play a relatively low-event game when neither player is on the ice, and they do defend a little better, but they generate almost nothing offensively and no matter who is on ice they are getting brutal goaltending. It is a bad combination.

That lack of depth across the roster is a big reason why the Oilers are fighting just to earn a playoff spot in an extremely weak and watered down Pacific Division.

Going into play on Tuesday they are still occupying a playoff spot, but they have several teams breathing right down their necks. They sit in the third playoff spot in the Pacific Division with a four-to-five point cushion over the Seattle Kraken, Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks, but all of those teams have games in hand on them, including a Sharks team that still has three games in hand. They also have quite a few head-to-head games remaining against a lot of those teams, including a huge game with the Sharks on Tuesday.

Points are hard to make up this late in the season, so I would still guess Edmonton does enough to secure a playoff spot. It just might be a lot tighter than they want it to be, and the absence of Draisaitl for the next 14 games is going to be very problematic. Especially if he is not quite ready for the start of the playoffs or not totally 100 percent healthy. That is also certainly possible.

There is nothing you can do about an injury or to prevent it, but even when their top players are all fully healthy they still had major flaws that were going to be a problem. And that is where management — and specifically general manager Stan Bowman — have to take the blame.

It is also why they can not use a Draisaitl injury to shield themselves from criticism if this ends up hurting their chances to make the playoffs. Or actually prevents them from making the playoffs.

Stan Bowman keeps pushing the wrong buttons, especially in net

Prior to the Draisaitl injury, the big Oilers news of the week was that they were moving forward with Connor Ingram as their starting goalie, and that he will receive the playing time that reflects his new place on the depth chart. It is probably the right move. Even though Ingram has not been anything special this season, he has still badly outplayed Tristan Jarry over the past few weeks.

While it is good news and a big opportunity for Ingram, and while it is a necessary move for the Oilers at the present time given their need for some sort of stability in goal, it is also an especially troubling move for the Oilers when you consider the big picture outlook and the context of that move.

Goaltending has been one of the Oilers big issues in recent years, and one they have never really been able to find an answer for.

Trading for Jarry was, in theory, supposed to be their move to fix it.

There are several problems with that attempted fix.

The short-term issue is that Jarry has been awful since arriving in Edmonton.

The long-term issue is that Jarry’s struggles should not really be a surprise, and the trade highlights some massive flaws with the Oilers team-building process and overall lack of a plan from Bowman.

Jarry has a decade of play in the NHL for people to look at and analyze. There are no secrets here. This is almost certainly what he is.

He has had flashes of strong play where he has performed like an above-average goalie, and even earned two All-Star game appearances for himself. But the most recent of those All-Star appearances was five years ago.

In between those All-Star game appearances, and since the most recent one, he has also had long stretches of play where he has become a liability for his team. Bad second-half performances, bad play in big and clutch moments, and just general inconsistency.

His 2024-25 performance was so bad that he was placed on waivers with no takers for his contract, and then sent to the American Hockey League to try and regain his confidence and get his game back on track. He briefly did at the start of the 2025-26 season and went through one of his brief spurts of strong play.

Instead of thinking, “hey, maybe this time is going to be different and this is the Tristan Jarry we are going to get,” the Penguins saw an opportunity to sell high and get rid of a contract they did not want, while also opening up a long-term spot for prized goalie prospect Sergei Murashov.

All they needed to do was find a sucker that would be willing to buy a flawed player at their highest possible value.

They found one.

Let’s talk about that, and more of the Oilers current issues.