When free agency opened on July 1, the Edmonton Oilers were very busy, agreeing to new contracts with several players who will likely be fixtures in the Oilers lineup next season: Viktor Arvidsson (age 31), Connor Brown (30), Josh Brown (30), Adam Henrique (34), Mattias Janmark (31), Corey Perry (39), Troy Stetcher (30), and Jeff Skinner (32).
Before going on their Canada Day shopping spree, the Oilers already had around a dozen NHL regulars under contract for 2024-25, including Cody Ceci (30), Mattias Ekholm (34), Zach Hyman (32), Evander Kane (32), Brett Kulak (30), Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (31), Calvin Pickard (32), and Derek Ryan (37).
You may notice a pattern here with the 2024 Western Conference champion Oilers: they weren’t young and are only getting older.
Yes, the Oilers roster will feature a handful of players still in their 20s: Evan Bouchard (24), Philip Broberg (23), Leon Draisaitl (28), Dylan Holloway (22), Connor McDavid (27), Darnell Nurse (29), and Stuart Skinner (25).
However, more than two-thirds of the 22 players most likely to be on the bench when Edmonton opens its 2024-25 season at home against the Winnipeg Jets on Oct. 9 will be in their 30s.
So yeah, the Oilers are old. But while time robs of athleticism, it also provides experience. The question is, as these Oilers look to end Edmonton’s lengthy Stanley Cup drought, is their advanced age an asset or an albatross?
Oilers Have NHL’s Oldest Current Roster
As currently constructed, Edmonton has an average age of 30.86 (For this article, all average ages have been taken from Elite Prospects’ Team Comparison tool). That’s a full year more than the second oldest team in the NHL, the Pittsburgh Penguins, whose average age is 29.79. Meanwhile, 27 of the league’s 32 teams have an average age under 29.
In 2023-24, the championship-winning Florida Panthers had an average age of 28.54, making them the league’s 15th oldest team, youth and experience virtually meeting halfway. And in 2021-22, the champion Colorado Avalanche had the 15th youngest team in the league, with an average age of 27.10.
However, in 2022-23, the Vegas Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup with the league’s seventh-most senior roster, averaging 28.23 years of age. In 2019-20 and 2020-21, the Tampa Bay Lightning won back-to-back championships with the sixth-oldest roster in the NHL each season, 27.77 and 28.03 years of age, respectively.
The St. Louis Blues also had the sixth oldest roster, aged 27.53, when they won their first championship in 2018-19. But the season before, the Washington Capitals captured the Stanley Cup with an average age of 26.88, the NHL’s youngest championship-winning roster of the last 14 years.
Oilers Don’t Have History on Their Side
So when was the last time a team with an average age over 30 drank from hockey’s holy grail? For that, one has to go back more than two decades, to 2001-02, when the Detroit Red Wings won it all with an average of 30.33.
The Red Wings of 2001-02 were old, but they had unmatched championship know-how: essentially half the roster had already won two titles together in Hockey Town, in 1996-97 and 1997-98, including Mathieu Dandenault, Kris Draper, Sergei Federov, Tomas Holmstrom, Igor Larionov, Nicklas Lidstrom, Kirk Maltby, Darren McCarty, Chris Osgood, Brendan Shanahan, and Steve Yzerman.
Thanks to Edmonton’s run to Game 7 of the 2024 Stanley Cup Final, today’s Oilers have relevant experience to a certain degree. However, only one member of the current Oilers roster, Perry, has won a championship, and that was 17 years ago, with the Anaheim Ducks in 2006-07.
Oilers Rank Among All-Time Oldest Teams
A big reason why you rarely see a championship-winning team with an average age over 30 is because there aren’t many teams with an average age over 30 to begin with.
Before the 2023-24 Penguins, with their average age of 30.26, it had been 13 years since a team registered an average age over 30, the 2010-11 Red Wings (30.21 years).
But over the long term, championship teams seem to have got longer in the tooth, likely due to a couple of factors: 1) an increased number of players in the NHL, as the league expanded by more than 50% over thirty years from 1991 to 2021; and 2) how players look after themselves now in terms of nutrition, training, and overall lifestyle – not only when they get into their older years, but from the moment they started taking hockey seriously.
Related: Jeff Skinner: All About the New Oilers Forward’s Fascinating Childhood
That’s encouraging for the Oilers, who generally haven’t been slowed by age. For example, Hyman scored 54 goals at age 31 and increased his goal output every year after age 28. Henrique just scored 24 times in a season he turned 34. And even among the newcomers, Jeff Skinner scored 24 for Buffalo in 2023-24 at age 31.
The last two NHL champions have had an average age of over 28, the first time in consecutive years during the salary cap era.
Age is just a number. So is 35. And that’s the number of years it will have been since Edmonton last won the Stanley Cup when the next postseason rolls around. Maybe it will take a team of players over 30 to end that drought.
