Doesn’t it feel good to watch Edmonton Oilers hockey again, even if it’s only pre-season?

In Saturday’s 5-2 pre-season win over the Winnipeg Jets, Oilers’ off-season addition Ryan Shea made a big impact on the blue line, recording three points and earning the game’s first-star honours.

I recently wrote a piece making a bold prediction that Shea would overtake Jake Walman for a top-four spot. However, as pre-season has gotten underway, it seems Mattias Ekholm is the odd man out of the top four for now, with him being paired with Shakir Mukhamadullin perhaps to mentor the young blueliner.

That said, it looks like Shea is in fact going to be given a shot in the top four right off the bat, but what I didn’t predict was the D-man being elevated to the top pair alongside Evan Bouchard.

A top-pair spot for Shea had crossed my mind, but I couldn’t pull the trigger on making that bold of a claim. Yet, the reason it crossed my mind is simple…

When Shea is paired with Bouchard, that means he’ll be playing with top forwards like Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, who are as elite as they come in the NHL, something we saw last game. And while playing on the top pair and with the team’s top unit may seem like a big jump for a D-man with only 150 regular-season games under his belt, Shea has already shown he can excel playing with elite players, having done so last season with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Crosby and Malkin’s underlying metrics improved when playing with Shea

In 2025-26, Shea played with Kris Letang on a pairing for parts of the season, and they were often paired with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, two future Hall of Famers.

That said, I’ve previously mentioned that at five-on-five, several of Crosby’s metrics were much........

© Oilers Nation