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The moon rises over Turtle Lake. Photo by Todd Kirkpatrick

The Edmonton Oilers played a good game against the Pittsburgh Penguins and have a chance to improve on their early season record (currently 3-4-1) with a late afternoon game against the Red Wings from Detroit. The coaching staff is still tweaking, but the players are settling in and hopefully we will see some consistency in the squad in the days to come. Today I’d like to discuss the things I noticed during the first eight games.

Athletics Today’s article is about the Bakersfield Condors’ first call-up. There are some interesting candidates, all over the age of 22. Among the prospects, there are also encouraging spikes. The item is here.

WHAT TO EXPECT IN OCTOBER

• At home for: WPG, CHI, CAL, PHI (expected 3-1-0) (actual 1-3-0)
• En route to: NAS, DAL (expected 1-1-0) (current 1-1-0)
• At home against: CAR, PIT (expected 1-1-0) (actual 1-0-1)
• En route to: DET, CBJ, NAS (expected 2-1-0) (actual 0-0-0)
• Expected overall result: 7-4-0, 14 points in 11 matches
• October actual results: 3-4-1, seven points from eight games
• Oilers in 2024-25: 3-4-1, seven points in eight games

If the Oilers lead the standings from here, and that’s a tall order, they can finish the month within a blink of my pre-October prediction. That’s impressive and shows you how powerful this range is when enough pistons fire in time.

THINGS I NOTICED

We’re only eight games into the season, too early to draw any definitive conclusions. The cement is not set, so a random dog or bird wandering in will change the appearance of the final product.

I have been impressed by the new wingers (Jeff Skinner, Viktor Arvidsson, Vasily Podkolzin) at different times and for different reasons.

Skinner is a skilled and thoughtful player, far from a one-trick pony. He quickly became one of my favorites, he is so smart and has excellent shooting and passing skills.

Viktor Arvidsson took a little while to get going, but he combines skill, intelligence and determination. I wonder what a Zach Hyman-Leon Draisaitl-Viktor Arvidsson line would look like?

Vasily Podkolzin has some Jason Chimera and/or Kent Manderville to him, and by that I mean he might be braver than the average Bear with the puck on his stick. We don’t know if this will result in an offense, and maybe he’ll become a hometown hero (take ’em away, Bucky!) whose offensive zone outings will certainly fail every time but are all equally amusing.

I also like the outgoing wingers (Hyman, Nuge, Connor Brown, Mattias Janmark, Corey Perry) and even one in the AHL (Matthew Savoie) and that’s encouraging. Evander Kane will eventually return, and that will give the club all kinds of picks and depth for the top three lines while saving (say) Janmark and Brown for the fourth line. That’s exceptional depth, the kind of depth that championship teams possess.

A year ago, Edmonton’s eight wingers at the start of the season were (based on five-on-five ice time) Kane, Hyman, Connor Brown, Warren Foegele, Dylan Holloway, Mattias Janmark, Derek Ryan (who also played center) and Adam Erne. I think this year’s group is better.

On defense at the start of last season, the big problem was that Mattias Ekholm (40 percent goal share in seven five-on-five games) was less than 100 percent.

The goaltenders are significantly better at five-on-five this season. Calvin Pickard (who Bob started today via Twitter) has a .929 SP and Stuart Skinner sits idling .912 in the driveway. Last year, after a similar number of games, Skinner had a .889 average and Jack Campbell .884.

I think this team is building a viable structure and improving things like passing and positioning. I also think the “don’t care” meter defensively has improved. These are all good things. Now the questions that will be asked are about injuries, fatigue, the effects of travel, and individual struggles related or unrelated to these things. So normal stuff. This should be a fun season and of course there will be some noise at the deadline.