Where does the 2024-25 Oilers opening-night roster rank in team history?

The Edmonton Oilers enter the 2024-25 season as a strong Stanley Cup contender.

Offseason improvements up front give the team a breathtaking depth chart on the top two lines, with the bottom six forwards a strong mix of veteran savvy of youthful enthusiasm.

The defence is also electric at the top and then steps into a state of worry on the second and third pairings.

Assuming there are no last-minute deals, where does this year’s opening-night lineup rank all-time?

For the Oilers, an organization less than 50 years old, the competition is incredible in a race for all-time opening-night lineups.

Here are Edmonton’s top nine opening rosters. They are in chronological order; the ranking is at the end.

1982-83 

The Hall of Fame players on this roster ran seven deep: Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Glenn Anderson, Paul Coffey, Kevin Lowe and Grant Fuhr.

The club added centre Ken Linseman in the offseason and overhauled the goaltending position by going young (drafting Fuhr in the first round in 1981). Andy Moog, about 18 months older than Fuhr (still a kid) and the goalie hero of the spring 1981 playoff shocker win over the Montreal Canadiens, was optioned at the end of camp (Ron Low started as the backup) but was soon recalled.

Randy Gregg and Charlie Huddy were young blueliners who would have an impact on the decade. Huddy was on the roster but did not play opening night. The team also enjoyed a small but strong group of rugged veterans who gave the team its spine: Lee Fogolin, Pat Hughes, Dave Hunter, Dave Lumley and world-class enforcer Dave Semenko.

An underrated player on that 1982-83 team was Jaroslav Pouzer. If a steamroller ever played in a hockey game, it would play exactly like Pouzar did every shift.

1983-84

This is the first Stanley Cup team. The seven Hall of Famers returned, and everyone was excited about the line of Linseman with wingers Messier and Anderson. We didn’t have NHL Edge numbers in 1983, but that line was fast as lightning for the era and incredibly dangerous. Messier and Anderson would cross over at centre ice, with one of them carrying the puck. Their collective speed was so infuriating to opponents that the play would often result in a slashing or tripping penalty and an Edmonton power play.

Willy Lindstrom was added during the 1982-83 season and made the team but not the opening-night lineup. He was another fast winger with skill and added to the high-octane entertainment. Fans were disappointed when Raimo Summanen was loaned back to his Finnish team but were hopeful he would return to the NHL after the Olympics.

This team ranks among the best ever. Messier’s move to centre late in the season is regarded by those who witnessed it as a key to igniting the Oilers Cup runs in the 1980s.

1984-85

The Hall of Famers were all back, plus gigantic centre-winger Mike Krushelnyski (acquired in the offseason) and rugged pivot Kevin McClelland (who came over in a December 1983 deal and played hero in Game 1 of the Final versus the New York Islanders).

Krushelnyski was a grinder with a scoring touch contained in a large frame. The mind boggles at what his AAV would be in today’s NHL.

Anderson held out until the last minute, some veterans (Dave Hunter was banged up but still made opening night) were also uncertain options but made the trip to the coast for the opener against the Los Angeles Kings.

The defence didn’t get many headlines during these years, beyond Paul Coffey’s scoring accomplishments. However, the group that included Lowe, Huddy, Gregg, Fogolin and welcomed Don Jackson and extra Larry Melnyk were no fun to play against during the 1980s.

This team won the club’s second Stanley Cup.

1986-87

In my opinion, this is the best NHL team ever constructed.

These Oilers could win in any combination of ways. Ridiculous skill, led by the Hall of Fame talents, married to increasing numbers of rugged men who could play in the heart of the game (McLelland, Marty McSorley, Esa Tikkanen), gave this team a different and more layered look than previous incarnations.

This team, perhaps more than any other, could beat a team playing any style.

Edmonton lost the opener for the season to the Philadelphia Flyers but would win over those same Flyers in a classic seven-game final in the spring of 1987.

It was a bittersweet run. The additions of Kent Nilsson and Reijo Ruotsalainen in March gave the team’s top end the look of an All-Star team. The trade of Dave Semenko to the Hartford Whalers in December 1986 signalled the beginning of the end for The Boys on The Bus. All would soon find their way to other NHL cities.

The exclamation point on the team’s finest season came in the moments after victory. Steve Smith, at the time a blossoming young defenceman, received the Stanley Cup from captain Gretzky in a move that served as redemption for the own-goal moment from the previous season’s playoff run.

1987-88

The opening-night roster was a mess.

The club was still strong up the middle, with Gretzky, Messier and exceptional two-way centre Craig MacTavish leading the way. Even that wasn’t certain for a time, as Messier was holding out (he would make it for opening night).

Meanwhile, Andy Moog and Randy Gregg were off to the Olympics, and Ruotsalainen dashed back to Finland.

The true end of an era came when the club dealt one of the members of the Hall of Fame cluster in the trade with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Coffey was included in a massive seven-player deal for sniper Craig Simpson in November 1987.

As unusual as opening night’s lineup looked in 1987, this Oilers team prevailed.

The “day the music died” for Oilers fans would come in the sale (sometimes called a trade) of Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings on Aug. 9, 1988.

1989-90

A year after the Gretzky sale, the Oilers were no longer a team in chaos but did have a roster in transition.

Any team with Messier, Kurri, Anderson, Tikkanen, Simpson, MacTavish, Lowe, Huddy and Fuhr (who missed time due to an emergency appendectomy) has a chance.

The October opener against the Vancouver Canucks saw Bill Ranford start in Game 1 of the season for the second year in a row. That honour was given to Fuhr through most of the Stanley Cup era.

The overriding story of the season, beginning to the deadline, was that Jimmy Carson wanted out of town. The Carson trade came in November 1989. A deal with the Detroit Red Wings brought (among others) Adam Graves, Petr Klima and Joe Murphy and provided the spark that brought Edmonton its only Gretzky-less championship in team history.

It was the first Stanley Cup team that took the league by surprise, and that helped the run.

2005-06

A long and difficult road for the franchise followed, but in the summer of 2005, the club was blessed (briefly) by a trade with the St. Louis Blues. All-time defensive great Chris Pronger, not far removed from his career peak, arrived in the city and things were never the same.

Pronger was the perfect player for coach Craig MacTavish, who was a meticulous defensive centre who developed into a fine button-down coach. He was a five-on-five coaching genius, and his 2005-06 Oilers teams became his masterpiece.

The opening night lineup had Pronger, plus five young forwards (Ales Hemsky, Shawn Horcoff, Fernando Pisani, Jarret Stoll, Raffi Torres) who played prominent roles while making under $1 million AAV toward the cap.

It was a perfect storm of talent deployed optimally. When general manager Kevin Lowe doubled down with a trade deadline for the ages, the 2005-06 Oilers were ready for glory. Deadline trades that brought in Dwayne Roloson, Jaroslav Spacek and Sergei Samsonov gave this edition of the team a look of destiny.

The 2006 Oilers finished just shy of the Stanley Cup, losing in seven games to the Carolina Hurricanes.

2023-24

It was a strange opener, with top defenceman Mattias Ekholm unavailable and coach Jay Woodcroft choosing an inopportune time to tweak the defensive structure (do you remember the fuss over “man-to-man” versus “zone”?).

The heart of the order (Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Zach Hyman, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Darnell Nurse) was joined by a group of youngsters who were coming of age (Evan Bouchard, Stuart Skinner, Ryan McLeod) to form an impressive roster that underperformed early due to injury and struggling veterans.

The team’s underlying numbers stayed strong all year, and when new coach Kris Knoblauch arrived things fell into place.

The Oilers once again made it all the way to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final but ran out of gas getting there.

2024-25

Is this team better than last year’s club? In some areas, the answer is clearly yes.

Goaltender Stuart Skinner is a year older and has a substantial playoff resume from the last two springs.

McDavid and Draisaitl will have strong wingers alongside them all year, with Hyman and Nugent-Hopkins (on the 97 line) joined by Jeff Skinner and Viktor Arvidsson (destined to play with 29) on the second line.

The third trio is a veteran group (Mattias Janmark, Adam Henrique and Connor Brown) with a strong playoff run behind them.

The fourth line is still sorting itself out but has a combination of youth (Vasily Podkolzin and likely recall Noah Philp) and experience (Derek Ryan and Corey Perry) giving Knoblach options.

The defence will dictate how far this team will go.

The top pairing of Ekholm and Bouchard might be the best duo in the business. Nurse needs to stay healthy and cut down on curious miscues that plagued him one year ago. Ty Emberson looks good so far, and the Oilers badly need him to be the player who can successfully work with Nurse against elites.

That second pairing will be key this year and may help the 2024-25 Oilers move up the list of all-time Edmonton teams.

Ranking the best-ever Oilers opening-night rosters

(Photo: Perry Nelson / USA Today)