Stan Bowman and the Oilers front office may have steadied the ship this summer, but the fan base is still far from sold.
That’s the clearest takeaway from new polling highlighted by Janson Duench of The Athletic, where Edmonton dropped from 21st to 27th in overall rankings. The message from Oilers fans is pretty blunt: the goodwill has not caught up to the moves.
A lot of that frustration still traces back to the same sore spots. The Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg offer-sheet mistakes are still hanging around.
So is the Tristan Jarry trade. Plenty of fans also haven’t moved past the Trent Frederic extension.
Even after the team added two legitimate goaltenders, brought in a potential stud on the blue line, and dealt Darnell Nurse, those opinions have barely budged.
The most encouraging sign for Edmonton is that not everything was received with the same level of suspicion. The response to Babcock’s hire, while loud at first, has settled into something closer to guarded belief.
As the source put it: “The blowback to Babcock’s hire was swift and deafening back in June, but there is now cautious optimism among Oilers faithful - over two-thirds of respondents are at least somewhat confident in the new bench boss and his track record. There’s certainly a vocal minority who believes his tenure will be an unmitigated disaster, but the majority says he has more trust than the outside noise might suggest.”
Still, the biggest concern remains the blue line, and it may have taken a hit with Nurse’s departure. If Babcock is going to make a real difference, that’s where it starts.
Depth scoring is another issue, and the question now is whether he can squeeze more out of the bottom of the lineup. He appears ready to lean into clearer roles and more responsibility for players, while also putting a cap on the ice time for the top stars.
How long he sticks with that approach will be part of the story.
Bowman, meanwhile, got some credit for his summer work, even if the numbers still weren’t kind. The Athletic noted that “There is overwhelming consensus that Bowman had a constructive summer, seemingly restoring some goodwill among fans.
He rebuilt the crease, shuffled the blue line and inked Jason Dickinson and Connor Murphy to five-year extensions, all while leaving the team with ample salary-cap flexibility.” Even with that, the Oilers still slid six spots in the broader faith-in-management rankings.
At this point, the path back is simple: win. A first-round playoff exit won’t erase the doubts.
A deep run might start to do that. A Stanley Cup would change everything, and finally give Edmonton the kind of respect its fans have been waiting to see.
For now, though, the criticism is still there, and the front office has work left to do.
In Other News...
Oilers Front Office Doubts Are Growing Around Connor McDavid's Window
The Oilers spent the offseason making major changes behind the bench, part of a broader effort to reset after a season that left plenty of questions about where the roster is headed. Firing Kris Knoblauch and bringing in Mike Babcock were the most visible moves, but they also fed a larger conversation around how Edmonton is managing the window around Connor McDavid and whether the organization is steering with urgency or just reacting to the latest setback.
That backdrop helps explain why the front-office conversation has turned so sharp. In a recent Athletic fan-based ranking, Edmonton slid further down the list as doubts continued to build around the way the team is being run, and the reaction has had less to do with one single move than with a growing feeling that the plan has been hard to pin down. For a franchise trying to keep pace with its superstar's timeline, that kind of skepticism is starting to matter. [Read more 🡒]
Oilers May Be Eyeing A Veteran Move That Reshapes The Bottom Six
The Oilers search for a little more certainty in the bottom six may be turning toward a familiar kind of veteran fix. Edmonton has been linked to a possible addition who could help stabilize the fourth line, bring some reliability at the dot, and give the coaching staff another trusted option when the game tightens up in the defensive zone.
A move like that would not just be about one player, either. It could ripple through the rest of the roster, forcing the Oilers to make a choice on younger depth pieces while they sort out how they want their checking lines to look heading into the next stretch of the season. More Oilers talk is expected soon on Sports 1440 and YouTube, where this kind of roster wrinkle should get plenty of attention. [Read more 🡒]