Oilers Release Pre-Season Schedule

For the first time since the Edmonton Oilers were eliminated from the postseason almost one month ago, focus truly has shifted to September of 2017. Most of the last month has been spent looking back and reminiscing, but today the Oilers gave us a glimpse of what the future holds in the form of their pre-season schedule.

The Oilers will play eight games (including a split-squad) starting on September 18th during a compacted 12 day schedule. The club will face the Calgary Flames, Winnipeg Jets, Vancouver Canucks and Carolina Hurricanes twice each. Both games against the Flames will take place on September 18th, with one in Edmonton and one in Calgary for the annual split-squad.

The Oilers will then travel to Winnipeg to face the Jets on 9/20 before returning home to face the Canucks on Friday, September 22nd. The Oilers will host the Jets the next night, 9/23, and then host Carolina on the 25th.

The highlight of the pre-season is likely to be Edmonton’s trip to Saskatoon, where they will play the Hurricanes on 9/27. The pre-season concludes on September 30th when the club visits Vancouver.

The full press release by the Oilers and schedule can be seen here.

#Oilers announce 2017 pre-season schedule which includes Sept. 27 matchup vs. @NHLCanes in Saskatoon: https://t.co/hfs31BfgUJ pic.twitter.com/SNBNFkS2Uv

— Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) June 8, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Some Thoughts:

This is a pretty standard pre-season slate for the Oilers, as the club will remain in Western Canada the entire time and play six of their games against teams close by. The two games against Carolina are interesting and different, but fall in line with past year’s when eastern teams who start their season out west head out a little early to get adjusted. The Rangers did the same thing just a few seasons ago.

The Oilers will return to Saskatoon to play for the first time since September of 2015 when they battled the Minnesota Wild. That event was a huge success and I imagine that the large volume of Oiler fans in that city will be out in force again this September to create a cool atmosphere in Saskatoon.

Something that is very interesting to me is that the pre-season is ending on September 30th. Last year, the exhibition season concluded on October 8th, nine days later.

Some have speculated that this leaves open the chance for the NHL to still announce a last second deal to attend the Olympics in February, but I can’t see that happening. More likely I think this is the NHL starting their season a little earlier to help ease the compacted schedules on teams due to the bye week. It was an issue this past season, and I think starting the campaign earlier will allow the NHL to spread things out a bit so teams get their bye week without a crazy tight schedule.

For those wondering about the regular season schedule, it’s around two weeks away. The NHL has already announced that it will release the full slate during the week of the annual entry draft. I highly doubt they will announce it on the day of the draft (June 23rd) or the awards show and expansion draft results (June 21st). My bet? We see the regular season slate come out on June 22nd.

We’re onto 2017-18.