Major setback this morning hits Mike Babcock and the Oilers

For Edmonton, that number measures the wrong thing.

The Hockey News slotted Babcock 28th of 32, bottom-five leaguewide, weeks after Stan Bowman hired him on June 23.

The panic writes itself. A Cup-or-bust roster handed to a coach whose last playoff-round win came in 2013, ranked near the basement before he has coached a single Edmonton game.

But the ranking grades reputation, not results yet to happen. And Edmonton is the league's clearest proof that reputation and Cup Finals barely overlap.

Kris Knoblauch arrived in November 2023 as a first-time NHL head coach straight from AHL Hartford. No preseason list would have placed him inside the top 20.

He took the Oilers to back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals anyway, losing both to Florida.

Then Bowman fired him this spring after a first-round exit to Anaheim.

Reaching two Finals bought him nothing.

If a coach nobody rated could reach the Final twice, the 28th beside Babcock's name predicts almost nothing about May.

The variable was never the bench boss's pedigree. It was goaltending, a thin blue line, and special teams that vanished when they mattered.

Edmonton finished 14th overall with 93 points, an eight-point drop, then lost four of six games to Anaheim. None of that traces to the name on the whiteboard.

Babcock inherits the same core, the same crease questions, and the same closing window. Connor McDavid's short extension keeps the clock loud.

That is the story the ranking hides.

Edmonton's ceiling turns on whether Bowman fixes the roster, not on where a July list files his new coach.

Judge Babcock in April, not in a preseason chart built from everything that happened before Edmonton.

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