The Oilers Fixed the Optics. The 13–22 Problem Is Still There.

Start with the number that actually broke Edmonton's season: 13–22. That is the Oilers' record in one-goal games last year — a 37% win rate in the moments that decide playoff races, against a 50% overall baseline. Nine games. That is the swing between a .500 team watching the postseason from a couch and a legitimate contender. Everything the Oilers did this offseason — the Babcock hire, the Frederik Andersen signing, the Connor Murphy addition, the Darnell Nurse trade — needs to be evaluated against that single ledger entry, because none of it directly addresses the execution breakdown that produced it.

Here is what makes the 13–22 number so stubborn: it is not a goaltending stat in isolation, and it is not a coaching stat in isolation. It is a systems stat. It measures whether your depth players can defend a lead, whether your penalty kill holds in the third period, whether your fourth line doesn't give up an odd-man rush when the game is tied in the final five minutes. Connor McDavid averaged 1.71 points per game across 48 games — genuinely elite production, the kind of number that should carry a franchise into the playoffs. It didn't, because the players around him couldn't execute when the margin was one goal. Signing a veteran goaltender and a new head coach changes the environment. It does not automatically change the personnel executing in those environments.

The Andersen signing is the move most directly aimed at the close-game problem, and it deserves credit for that. A 36-year-old with playoff experience brings something Tristan Jarry and Connor Ingram — who split last year's crease — demonstrably could not: the credibility of a goaltender who has been in tight games and won them. That matters culturally and tactically. But Andersen is one year removed from age-related durability questions, and a one-year deal at 36 is a bet on a single season of health. If he gives Edmonton 55 starts of above-average goaltending, the close-game math shifts. That is a significant if.

The defensive restructuring tells a more complicated story. Trading Nurse cleared the -9 anchor from the blue line and freed cap space, which is defensible roster management. But the depth chart behind Evan Bouchard remains the league's most alarming single-player dependency. Bouchard put up 46 points in 48 games — that production is real and the defense runs through him. Murphy arrives as the third defenseman by depth-chart ranking, and his numbers are not yet in evidence for this roster. The team needs are graded high at defense specifically because the drop from Bouchard to everyone else is structural, not situational. Murphy may help. He does not solve it.

The left-wing situation is where I keep returning when I want to understand what this team actually is. Zach Hyman, the nominal starter, produced at 46% of league median for his position across 25 games — and there is no viable depth behind him at left wing. None. That is a roster construction hole that no amount of coaching philosophy covers up. In one-goal games, when the opposition is playing its best defensive structure and every line matters, the Oilers are going to need secondary scoring from that wing. It isn't there right now. The Colton Dach extension adds forward depth, but the left-wing production gap is a separate, unresolved problem.

Mike Babcock is a genuinely interesting variable here. His track record — multiple Cup wins, elite defensive systems, a career built on turning talented-but-undisciplined rosters into accountable ones — suggests he is precisely the kind of coach who can move the needle in one-goal situations. Tight-game performance is partly about structure, about who is on the ice in the final two minutes and what they are being asked to do. If Babcock tightens the defensive zone coverage and installs the kind of late-game discipline that his best teams historically displayed, the 13–22 number has a legitimate pathway to improvement. My read is that the coaching hire is the most underrated move of this offseason, not because it solves depth, but because it directly targets the decision-making environment that produced those 22 losses. The question is whether the roster executing his system is good enough to finish the job — and on the left wing, on the third defensive pairing, in the moments that matter most