NHL: Each franchise’s best team ever

NHL: Each franchise’s best team ever: 1984-85 Edmonton Oilers

This is pretty simple. Which Wayne Gretzky-era Edmonton Oilers team is the best? Alright, maybe that’s not so simple, but at least we figured out the best era in Oilers history. This era had Gretzky, Mark Messier, Grant Fuhr, Jari Kurri, Glenn Anderson, and Paul Coffey. To say this team was stacked is a massive understatement.

The 1984-85 Edmonton Oilers are widely considered the best NHL team of all time. This isn’t just the best Oilers team, this is the best team ever. Gretzky scored 208 points, one of the four times he broke the 200-point plateau. He ended up winning his sixth-straight Hart Trophy. The team as a whole scored over 400 goals. Coffey put up 121 points from the blue line. This team still had Kevin Lowe on the roster. Kurri had a career-high 71 goals. How can you stop this team?

Well, the simple answer is nobody could. The Oilers lost 20 games out of 70 that season. In the playoffs, they won the first nine games, sweeping the first two series and sending a message to the Black Hawks with an 11-2 series-opening win. After losing their first two games of the postseason, they scored 18 goals in the final two games of the Western Conference Finals on the way to the Stanley Cup Final.

After losing the first game to the Philadelphia Flyers, the Oilers won four straight to lift yet another Stanley Cup Championship. There’s not much more to say. This team was insanely good, as were some of the other Oilers teams. The difference here is the Oilers knew exactly how this all worked. They needed to bide their time, and the game would eventually come to them. It almost always led to a win.