EDMONTON — Connor McDavid skated between Leon Draisaitl and Vasily Podkolzin during the Edmonton Oilers’ informal skate at the Downtown Community Arena on Wednesday, a pairing that surfaced on the same day the captain said publicly that the team wants more stability in its forward groupings this season.
The Oilers are roughly a week out from the opening of training camp, according to the club, and Wednesday’s three-period scrimmage was the first time much of the roster had been on the ice together since a first-round playoff exit against the Anaheim Ducks closed out a season that started poorly and never fully recovered.
Edmonton was 11-10-5 and sixth in the Pacific Division at the end of November last season, according to the team. The club reached the Stanley Cup Final in 2024 and again in 2025.
McDavid told reporters after the skate that inconsistent deployment made it harder for players to settle into defined roles, and that fixing it is one of the things the leadership group has asked for.
“We’ve asked a long time for some consistency throughout lines and building chemistry. It’s not easy just to kind of jumping around from spot to spot, switching positions and having guys playing up and down the lineup,” McDavid said, in comments published Thursday by NHL.com. “It’s hard mentally. It’s hard to understand what your job is, so I think we’re looking for some consistency throughout the lineup in terms of where guys are playing.”
He was careful to note that those calls are not his to make. Lineup decisions rest with new head coach Mike Babcock and his staff, McDavid said, and the informal sessions that precede camp carry no official weight. A line assembled at a September skate is not a line, and Babcock has not run a practice with the full group yet.
Still, the combination is worth recording. Podkolzin spent much of last season in a middle-six role and has not been a regular fixture alongside the two centres who have carried Edmonton’s offence for most of a decade.
The same NHL.com report carried a firmer line on the club’s injured players than anything the Oilers have issued to date. Forwards Matt Savoie and Mattias Janmark, defenceman Alec Regula and goaltender Frederik Andersen will be kept off the ice until after the regular season begins, according to the report.
That is a step beyond what the team said in its own statement on Aug. 26, which announced only that the four were not expected to participate in training camp and did not attach a return timeline to any of them. In that release, the Oilers said Janmark and Regula were still recovering from medical procedures performed last season and shortly after it ended, while Savoie and Andersen were rehabilitating injuries sustained during off-season training. The club said updates would be provided when appropriate and has not issued one since.
The absences reshape what camp is actually for. With Savoie unavailable, there is an opening in the forward group that would otherwise have been his to compete for, and with Andersen out, Edmonton opens the season without the veteran goaltender it signed on July 2 to a one-year contract. Babcock will be sorting a lineup while four players who were expected to be part of it watch from elsewhere.
McDavid, for his part, framed the mood in the room as unusually settled for a group coming off a disappointing spring.
“We still haven’t started, but the comfort in the room seems good,” he said. “Guys have really put their egos aside, and guys are here to win, and that’s what we want.”
Asked about the length of his summer, the captain was blunt about the one benefit of an early exit. “Enough time to miss the game for a while,” he said. “And that’s a good thing.”
Whether the McDavid, Draisaitl and Podkolzin look survives contact with a real practice is the first small question of the Edmonton season. The larger one, the one McDavid kept circling back to Wednesday, is whether a team that spent two years learning it could raise its level in April can now be bothered to do the ordinary work of October and November.
Oilers Fan Day is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 19 at Rogers Place and Ice District, the club announced Sept. 8. Edmonton opens the regular season against the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Place on Sept. 29.
Photo: Leon Draisaitl, 2019 file photo by Sven Mandel, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. The image is not from the Sept. 9 informal skate described above.
