Connor Brown's revival helps Oilers power into 2025

EDMONTON — For Connor Brown, 2024 came in like a lamb. And he ain’t lyin’.

Coming to the Edmonton Oilers last season after suffering a torn ACL four games into the 2022-23 campaign, he had no idea how long it would take him to become the effective player the Oilers had signed to a $4 million deal.

Brown didn’t score his first goal until March 13, at which point the fans gave him a standing ovation for netting the seventh goal in a 7-2 win over Washington. He had taken a 0.00 shooting percentage into the 64th game of the season, and when that pass from Evander Kane rattled off of Brown’s skate, or stick, or whatever, and went into the net, it begat an organic act of kindness from 18,347 fans that humbled Brown.

“You play in a big market like this, they’re aware of the storylines. It means a lot,” he said of that ovation. “It’s been a struggle this year, offensively. I haven’t been able to get one to go. For their support to shine through there, they’re rooting for me, it was a good feeling.”

As the calendar turns to 2025, Brown is giving the Oilers far, far more production on his current one-year, $1 million deal than he did when he was making four times as much.

“Connor Brown, in his first 13 games, he had one point,” head coach Kris Knoblauch was saying after a solid, 4-1 win on New Year’s Eve over Utah. “Then after that, he's producing at a point per game almost (23 games, 5-12-17). I think he's third on our team, behind Leon and Connor (over that span of games).”

Brown was promoted to Connor McDavid’s right wing on Tuesday night and had two assists and a plus-2 game in his debut on the top line. He has 10 points in his last nine games, and 18 points this season — after a 16-point season in total last year.

Better yet, 16 of his 18 points have come at even strength, solid depth production from a guy who had been on the third line all season long. Until Tuesday.

What did last season teach Brown, a Toronto kid who is playing on his third Canadian NHL team?

“That I am pretty resilient,” he told Oilers TV after the game. “I overcame a lot, and I’m pretty thankful for this fanbase sticking with me through some low times. I’m excited for 2025 and to see what it brings.”

As the fireworks go off on an Oilers team that has the third-best points percentage (.667) in the NHL in the calendar year 2024, Knoblauch brought in the New Year with multiple line changes to start this game. Then, when he didn’t like a couple of his deployments, he made a couple more changes during the first intermission.

The only line that stayed the same from previous games was Draisaitl between Vasily Podkolzin and Viktor Arvidsson.

“You pretty much know who your best players are, and they're going to get most of the ice time,” reasoned Knoblauch. “But you also want to reward players who have been playing well, and one of them has been Connor Brown.”

Brown moved up to play right wing on McDavid’s line, while Ryan Nugent-Hopkins went down to centre the third line for the first time in ages. Jeff Skinner came back in to play on a fourth line centred by Adam Henrique, a pretty strong show of force down the middle when you consider Edmonton’s four centremen: McDavid, Draisaitl, Nugent-Hopkins and Henrique.

Perhaps not ironically, it was the Oilers' depth (and goaltending) that was too much for Utah. The Oilers outshot Utah 38-27.

Draisaitl’s line had some extended zone time before Mattias Ekholm cashed for the game’s first goal, and when Utah evened the count, McDavid and Brown assisted on two goals — by Nugent-Hopkins and Troy Stecher — in a 20-second span of the second period that put this one to bed.

Utah had played the night before in Seattle, and scratched Clayton Keller right before the lineups were submitted. They required a sleepy Oilers side if they were going to eke out a point or two here, and they found nothing of the sort.

“I thought we kind of got away from it in Anaheim, but (they were) back on track tonight,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “A full 60 (minutes), just solid, hard to play against, and created a lot.

“It's a funny cliche always, but you keep things simple and works out for us.”

OIL SPILLS — McDavid’s two points give him 1,036 and move him past Mark Messier into third place on the Oilers all-time points list. Next up, Jari Kurri at 1,043, then Wayne Gretzky with 1,669 … McDavid and Draisaitl (empty netter) both extended their points streaks to 12 games … With Troy Stecher and Ekholm scoring, Edmonton has 24 goals from defencemen this season, second in the NHL behind only Columbus (25) … Edmonton is 9-1 in its past 10 home games, and have the best penalty kill in the NHL since Nov. 12. They killed both Utah power plays Tuesday.