Babcock Inherits a Team That Lost Nine More Close Games Than It Should Have — Now He Has to Fix It

The number that defined Edmonton's 2025–26 season wasn't McDavid's point total or the goals-against average or even the final record. It was nine. Nine more one-goal losses than a league-average team would absorb. The Oilers finished 13–22 in one-goal contests, and that 37% win rate in tight games is the clearest possible indictment of a roster that had the star power to generate leads and the structural weakness to surrender them. Mike Babcock walks into that specific problem on June 23, newly hired and already staring at the receipts.

Here is the narrow path to a better outcome, and it runs through two things Babcock can actually control: defensive structure and goaltending stability. The late-season evidence is genuinely encouraging on the first point. Edmonton allowed 4.0 goals per game across the first stretch of the season, then tightened to 2.3 over the final ten. That 1.7-goal swing didn't come from roster magic — the personnel was largely the same. It came from somewhere in execution or system, which means Babcock has proof of concept sitting in last year's game logs. The question is whether he can make that late-season version of the Oilers the September version instead.

The defensive restructuring around him is real. Darnell Nurse, who finished at -9 and was the symbolic anchor of everything that went wrong on the blue line, is gone to San Jose. Connor Murphy arrives on a five-year deal to replace him, and Evan Bouchard — 46 points in 48 games, the engine of the power play — remains the fulcrum of the entire back end. Bouchard is genuinely excellent. The problem is the cliff behind him. Murphy is an upgrade on Nurse as a defensive presence, but the depth chart beyond those two is thin enough that a single injury reshapes the entire structure. Babcock's system will be tested earliest and most severely there.

In net, the organization made a pointed choice: Frederik Andersen, 36 years old, one-year deal. This is not a franchise goalie acquisition. It is a bet that a veteran with playoff experience can stabilize a position that was, frankly, a liability last season. Connor Ingram was the only goaltender who logged meaningful minutes, with no credible backup behind him — a structural fragility that compounded every close-game loss. Andersen doesn't solve the depth problem permanently, but he raises the floor, and in one-goal games, floor matters more than ceiling.

The path breaks if the wings don't hold. Zach Hyman played only 25 games last season and produced well below what his role demands — and there is no quality depth behind him at left wing. That's not a knock on Hyman personally; it's a roster construction problem that the offseason didn't fully address. McDavid and Draisaitl combined for 150 points, and the team still went .500, which tells you everything about how little the supporting cast contributed in the moments that decided games. Colton Dach's extension adds forward depth, and Jason Dickinson's re-signing gives Babcock a reliable defensive center to deploy in exactly the kind of tight third periods that killed Edmonton last year. But if Hyman misses time again, or if Adam Henrique and Mattias Janmark — both currently unavailable — aren't healthy for training camp, the forward group thins out fast.

My read is that Babcock's real value isn't tactical innovation; it's accountability infrastructure. He builds teams that compete in close games because he demands the defensive habits that make close games winnable. Edmonton already showed it can play that way — for ten games. The coaching hire is a bet that ten games of evidence can become eighty-two. September 29, Vancouver comes to Edmonton to open the season. That's the first data point. The receipt for this offseason gets written one close game at a time.