EDMONTON, AB – The Edmonton Oilers open their main training camp on Wednesday, handing Mike Babcock his first day in charge of an NHL club in nearly seven years and giving him roughly a week less than his recent predecessors got to install a system before the games count.
The club confirmed the Wednesday start date in its recap of Monday night’s rookie game in Calgary. League-wide, on-ice training camp practices begin Thursday, NHL.com reported Tuesday.
That is the entire runway. Under the collective bargaining agreement that takes effect Wednesday, the pre-season has been cut to four games from the six to eight most clubs played in past years, and the regular season extended to 84 games from 82. NHL.com senior writer Tom Gulitti reported the change leaves 12 days between the first practice and puck drop for the 10 teams playing on opening night, Sept. 29. Edmonton is one of them, hosting the Vancouver Canucks.
Several other provisions in the new agreement tighten the window further. Players with at least 100 games of NHL experience may dress for only two exhibition games. Clubs are limited to three hours of access to their players per day across meetings and practices. Mandatory fitness testing has been eliminated. The same agreement is the one that cuts the maximum contract term to seven years from eight as of Wednesday.
The squeeze falls hardest on teams breaking in a new bench boss, and Edmonton is not the only one in the Pacific Division doing that.
“Everything will be brand new from Day 1, so the learning part of it, that window has shrunk quite a bit, and that’s just something that I’m going to have to deal with,” new Los Angeles Kings coach Peter Laviolette told NHL.com. “Sometimes you might not get to a power play until Day 5.”
Babcock, 63, was hired June 23 to replace Kris Knoblauch, who was fired May 14 after three seasons and two trips to the Stanley Cup Final, NHL.com reported. He is the 19th head coach in Oilers history and the sixth since Connor McDavid was selected first overall in the 2015 NHL Draft.
He has not coached an NHL game since the Toronto Maple Leafs fired him 23 games into the 2019-20 season. He resigned from the Columbus Blue Jackets in September 2023 without coaching a regular-season game, days after a podcast report that he had asked players to share personal photos stored on their phones. The league said in a June 18 statement that its review of his tenure in Columbus “concluded that, even in a light least favorable to Mr. Babcock, there is no current basis to restrict his employment in the League.”
Babcock is 12th in NHL history with 700 wins and 17th with 1,301 games coached across 17 seasons with Anaheim, Detroit and Toronto, according to NHL.com. He coached Canada to Olympic gold in 2010 and 2014 and to the World Cup of Hockey title in 2016.
General manager Stan Bowman framed the hire as a deliberate turn toward experience.
“The last two coaches that the Oilers had hired were first-time coaches,” Bowman told NHL.com, referring to Knoblauch and Jay Woodcroft. “I think you have to look at where the organization is right now, and at this moment in time, I think we need something different than we had before. This is a hockey market here, the fans are passionate, the expectations are high, so we were looking for somebody that clearly had experience and also had a winning pedigree.”
D.J. Smith was hired as associate coach. Smith, 49, went 11-6-6 as coach of the Kings after Jim Hiller was fired March 1 and was head coach in Ottawa from 2019 until he was fired 26 games into the 2023-24 season. He spent four seasons as an assistant under Babcock in Toronto from 2015 to 2019.
Babcock will sort his roster a man or four short. The Oilers announced on Aug. 26 that forwards Mattias Janmark and Matt Savoie, defenceman Alec Regula and goaltender Frederik Andersen are not expected to take part in camp. Janmark and Regula are recovering from medical procedures performed last season and shortly after it ended, the club said, while Savoie and Andersen are rehabilitating injuries sustained in off-season training. Bowman has not ruled out adding a player on a professional tryout.
The prospects arrive with momentum. Edmonton’s rookies closed rookie camp with a 6-1 win over the Calgary Flames rookies on Monday at Scotiabank Saddledome, getting goals from five players and 26 saves on 27 shots from three goaltenders. Quinn Hutson, Viljami Marjala and Zach Bookman each recorded multiple points, and Isaac Howard scored on the power play. Some of that group carries on to main camp, the club said, while others return to junior or to the American Hockey League’s Bakersfield Condors.
Under the old calendar, a new coach could spend the opening days of camp mixing veterans and prospects and use the back half of an eight-game exhibition slate to settle a lineup. That option is gone. Washington Capitals coach Spencer Carbery, whose club opens Oct. 2, told NHL.com the arithmetic now reads “literally five or six practices, two games, ‘Let’s go!’”
For Edmonton, the countdown runs to Saturday, when the four-game pre-season schedule opens at Rogers Place, and then to Sept. 29, when the Canucks visit for the first of a home-and-home to start the season. Whatever Babcock intends to change about a team that went 41-30-11, finished second in the Pacific Division and lost the Western Conference First Round in six games to the Anaheim Ducks, he has under two weeks of ice time to teach it.
Photo: Mike Babcock behind the Detroit Red Wings bench in Calgary, April 2007. Credit: JamesTeterenko, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
