PREVIEW: Oilers at Canucks (Preseason)

The Edmonton Oilers close out their pre-season schedule on Friday night with a trip to Vancouver to face the Canucks at Rogers Arena.

You can watch the game live on Sportsnet beginning at 8:00 PM MT, and listen live on the Oilers Radio Network, including 880CHED.

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PREVIEW: Oilers at Canucks (Preseason)

EDMONTON, AB – One final time for the preseason.

The Edmonton Oilers will play the eighth and final game of their lengthy 2025 pre-season schedule on Friday night when they head back out West to face the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena.

This is the final time the Oilers will have to play upwards of eight exhibition games before the limit for NHL teams is lowered next season to four, and there’s excitement among the veterans on the team that it’s the last year of extra-long preseasons.

But most importantly, they’re just chomping at the bit to play meaningful games, and Friday’s trip to Vancouver will be their final tune-up before they host the Calgary Flames on Oct. 8 at Rogers Place to open the regular season.

The less practice and more playing, the better.

“Yeah, for sure. This last week is a bit of a stretch,” defenceman Mattias Ekholm said. “We have one more game, and then we have four days before the first game. It's the same for everybody, so it's not anything different. But it will definitely be nice next year when they shorten it a little bit.

“It’s been a lot of practice, so I'm ready for the games to get going.”

For the Oilers, there's still a lot of value in one more pre-season game when it comes to evaluating the options they have competing for a handful of roster after cutting their Camp roster down to 26 players (16 forwards, eight defencemen and two goalies) on Thursday morning.

NHL rosters will need to be finalized on Monday before the start of the regular season on Tuesday.

Among those names sent down were defencemen Cam Dineen and Riley Stillman, who were placed on waivers, and blueliner Atro Leppanen and forwards Quinn Hutson, Josh Samanski, James Hamblin, Viljami Marjala and Connor Clattenburg, who were loaned to the Condors.

Hamblin, Marjala, and Clattenburg were all sent back down to Bakersfield after being recalled to play in Wednesday's 4-2 preseason loss to the Kraken due to a few injuries and illnesses.

The organization's top prospects, Isaac Howard and Matt Savoie, as well as older but less experienced players David Tomasek, Noah Philp, and Alec Regula, along with established NHL options Curtis Lazar and Max Jones, are all still hopeful of using this last pre-season game to show why they belong in the NHL.

Young players like Savoie, Howard and Philp – including the ones who haven't made it this far in Camp – have been essential to raising the energy and compete levels over Camp and preseason, helping keep the veterans sharp as the youth gets integrated more and more with the group.

"I think that you need youth," Ekholm said. "You need guys pushing, especially as older guys, just to make sure that everybody's on top of their game. We have some really talented young guys here that're going to take big steps this year, and I'm excited to see what they can bring."

Savoie looked solid during Edmonton's 4-2 defeat in Seattle on Wednesday by registering a goal and a team-high 19:50 of ice time among forwards, including plenty of time on both the power play and penalty kill, with the 21-year-old looking poised to crack the Oilers' roster coming out of Camp.

Centre Noah Philp missed that contest due to illness along with David Tomasek, but the former University of Alberta Golden Bear was back on the ice for practice the next day at the Downtown Community Arena, and he's expected to get the chance to make an impact on Friday against the Canucks.

Philp has been competing for a roster spot and looking like a much more mature player by taking the approach of just trying to work on himself and get one percent better each day instead of worrying too much about how the pieces will fall when the Oilers' roster is finalized on Monday.

"There are so many good players and so much competition," he said. "I think you can get too worried about who you're up against and competing with, and you want to be happy for your teammates. So I think just trying to be better than yourself the day before is the way that I stay out of my own head."

Forward Vasily Podkolzin has the chance to suit up on Friday after returning from Russia this week following the unfortunate passing of his father. The 24-year-old hasn't played since he signed his three-year contract extension with the Oilers for an average annual value of $2.95 million on Sept. 23.