Camp Opens With a Shortened Clock: Why the Oilers' Injuries Matter Before an 84-Game Season

Hockey used to hide in September. Two weeks of split squads, extra exhibitions, and a forgiving runway between the first medical and the first real game. That runway is gone.

The NHL announced an eight-day, 65-game preseason, played across 36 NHL and neutral-site venues, beginning Saturday, Sept. 19, and running through Saturday, Sept. 26. League public relations called it the first reduced preseason under the NHL/NHLPA Collective Bargaining Agreement, built to make room for an 84-game regular season and two extra divisional games per team. The regular season opens Tuesday, Sept. 29, with an ESPN tripleheader in the United States and a Sportsnet doubleheader in Canada. The preseason itself slams shut with 14 games on Saturday, Sept. 26.

That is not a camp. That is a sprint. For Edmonton, it is the first story of the year, because four NHL bodies will not be in the building when it starts.

On Aug. 26 the club said forwards Mattias Janmark and Matt Savoie, defenseman Alec Regula, and goaltender Frederik Andersen are not expected to participate in training camp. Janmark and Regula are recovering from medical procedures performed last season and shortly after the season ended. Savoie and Andersen are rehabilitating injuries from off-season training. The team was explicit about the one thing it would not do: “Updates on each player’s availability to return to action will be provided when appropriate.” There are no return dates in this piece because the club has not given any.

An 84-game season was always going to punish teams that treat September like a rehearsal. A shortened preseason punishes them immediately. Edmonton is the clearest example, not because the injuries are unique, but because they hit spots a compressed calendar cannot paper over: a winger who had just earned McDavid minutes, a depth forward and a defenseman still coming back from the knife, and a goaltender signed to stabilize a crease that already had two other names on it.

Eight Days to Fit an 84-Game Season

Count the days. Physicals and medicals for Edmonton are Sept. 16, per NHL.com’s camp preview. The Oilers’ first preseason game is Sept. 19 at home against Winnipeg. The regular season opens Sept. 29 at home against Vancouver. Between the first medical date and the first game that counts, this roster gets four exhibitions, not a traditional camp, and it gets them against the three Western Canadian clubs that know Edmonton’s tendencies better than anyone.

The Oilers’ own June 17 release laid out the four-game set: Sept. 19 vs. Winnipeg at Rogers Place, 6 p.m. MT; Sept. 22 at Winnipeg, 5 p.m. MT; Sept. 24 at Vancouver, 7 p.m. MT; Sept. 26 vs. Calgary, 7 p.m. MT. That is eight days of hockey against Winnipeg, Winnipeg again, Vancouver, and Calgary. No Florida trip. No split-squad padding. No extra night to play a prospect while a veteran rests a groin he does not want to talk about. The CBA traded those nights for two more divisional games in the regular season. The trade is league-wide. The cost is local.

Around the league, the shortened slate is being treated as a logistics puzzle. Neutral sites still exist, they are just crammed into the same eight-day envelope. The Canadiens and Senators play the Kraft Hockeyville game on Monday, Sept. 21, at Colisée Vidéotron in Trois-Rivières, a 7 p.m. ET start, celebrating Saint-Boniface, Quebec, the 2025 Kraft Hockeyville community. Carolina vs. Nashville is in Greensboro, N.C., on Sept. 24. Philadelphia vs. Washington is in Hershey, Pa., on Sept. 21 at Giant Center. Los Angeles vs. the Golden Knights is in Ontario, Calif., on Sept. 19 at Toyota Arena. Those games are good for the sport and brutal for a staff evaluating 30-plus bodies in a week while traveling to a non-NHL barn.

The evaluation problem is the point. A traditional preseason let a coach bury a mistake on a Tuesday in a game that nobody would remember. This preseason is eight days and 65 games, then the real thing on Sept. 29. If a center is not ready on Sept. 26, he is not getting another dress rehearsal on Oct. 3. If a goalie tandem is not sorted, Opening Night is an ESPN window, not a quiet Tuesday in the minors. The league did this on purpose. The 84-game season, with two extra games inside the division, is the product. Preseason is the cost.

Edmonton’s calendar makes the cost visible. The staff will open camp without a full roster and will play four games against opponents it will see all winter. Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Calgary are not look-at-the-kids opponents. They are Pacific and Central clubs that will spend those four nights collecting information. Every Oilers winger who gets a look next to Connor McDavid in those games is also giving Winnipeg’s staff a look at how Edmonton wants to play 5-on-5 without its injured pieces. That is the shortened clock. There is no private evaluation. There is only tape, and the tape is shared.

The 14-game Saturday that closes the preseason on Sept. 26 includes Calgary at Edmonton at 9 p.m. ET. That is the last night the Oilers can make a mistake that does not go in the standings. Three days later they host Vancouver. The regular season does not care that camp was shorter. It cares that the extra two divisional games are on the schedule, and that somebody has to play them in March with a roster that was already managing health in September.

Four Empty Lockers and a Crease That Cannot Wait

The Oilers’ Aug. 26 statement was short. The implications are not.

Matt Savoie is the injury that changes camp on the ice. NHL.com has him at 37 points (18 goals, 19 assists) in 82 games in his first full NHL season, plus one assist in six playoff games. Reporting around the club has described the off-season training injury as lower-body. The team has not specified it, and it has not attached a date to his return. What the team cannot hide is the role he had earned. OilersNation’s camp report noted that down the stretch Savoie scored nine goals and 19 points in his final 24 regular-season games and spent 63 percent of his 5-on-5 ice time with McDavid, with the pair outscoring opponents 13-7 in 203 minutes and controlling 53.4 percent of expected goals and 55.8 percent of the shot share. That is not a bottom-six story. That is a top-six winger who just proved he could live in McDavid’s minutes, and he will not be on the first camp ice.

When a winger like that is missing in a normal September, a staff can ease a replacement through three extra exhibitions. In an eight-day camp, the replacement has to look like the answer by the Winnipeg home game or the staff is still guessing on Opening Night. Watch who gets those McDavid 5-on-5 reps against the Jets. That player is not competing in a vacuum. He is competing against a clock.

Mattias Janmark is the other forward out, and his file is a medical timeline more than a scoring one. NHL.com says he went on injured reserve Oct. 6, 2025, after three preseason games, debuted Nov. 10, played 43 games with eight points (one goal, seven assists), and last played Feb. 25 before surgery for an undisclosed injury. Reporting has described that procedure as shoulder surgery in March, tied to an issue that dated to 2024-25. The club’s August statement grouped him with Regula as still recovering from a procedure. Janmark’s value in Edmonton has never been the scoresheet. It is penalty killing, north-south detail, and the minutes that keep a star unit from having to start in the defensive zone after a faceoff. Losing that in a short camp means the penalty-kill groups are being built without one of the adults.

Alec Regula is the defenseman in the same bucket. NHL.com has him at three assists in 29 games last season. Reporting has him injured two games into last season, then down to Bakersfield later, with a procedure after the year ended. A right-shot defenseman who can eat third-pair minutes is exactly the player a shortened preseason is supposed to evaluate. Edmonton will not get that look. The pairings that open against Winnipeg will be pairings built without him, and they may have to be the pairings that open against Vancouver 10 days later.

Then there is the crease, which is where a shortened calendar stops being a roster trivia question and starts being a season question.

Frederik Andersen will not be at camp. NHL.com recorded a one-year, $2.8 million contract signed July 1 after five seasons in Carolina, and it recorded the hockey that got him the deal: 13-2, 1.89 goals-against average, .910 save percentage, and three shutouts in 16 games in a Stanley Cup run, then a knee injury that ended his Final after Game 3. Last season in Carolina he was 16-14-5 with a 3.05 GAA and .874 save percentage in 35 games. Reporting around the Edmonton signing has described a one-year, $1 million cap-hit deal with bonuses attached, and it has pointed to a three-year stretch of blood clots, a knee injury, and a concussion that limited him to 73 regular-season games. Those are reporting details, not a club diagnosis. The club has said only that he is rehabilitating an off-season training injury and that updates will come when appropriate.

The plan in net, as reported when Andersen signed, was a crease shared with Tristan Jarry and newly acquired Devon Levi. Levi came from Buffalo on July 1, per the club’s own movement tracker. Jarry is already on the roster. Andersen was the experienced closer. A three-goalie camp is already awkward in eight days. A three-goalie camp with one of the three in rehab is a two-goalie camp that still has to decide who starts on Sept. 29 against Vancouver, on national television, with no extra exhibition to hide a bad night.

This is why the Oilers’ injuries matter more than a normal September absence. In an old preseason, Andersen could miss camp and appear in the third week of exhibitions. Savoie could skate on his own and slip into a lineup in Game 5 of the preseason. Janmark and Regula could be medical updates in a notebook. In this preseason there is no third week. There are four games, eight days, then 84. The Pacific Division will not wait for Edmonton’s rehab group to catch the calendar.

The honest read does not invent a return. Camp in Edmonton will be forced decisions: who plays with McDavid, who kills penalties, who handles the third pair, who starts in net. Those used to be reversible in September. They are harder to reverse when the first mistake is still on the scoreboard in October.

The league shortened the clock on purpose. Opening Night is Sept. 29. The tape from the four Western Canada games will be the only tape they have.