Edmonton Oilers closing in on franchise milestone

In the very near future, the Edmonton Oilers will become the 15th NHL franchise to score 10,000 regular season goals.

After beating Columbus 7-2 Tuesday night, the Oilers are at 9,995 goals, five away from the milestone.

But there’s a catch.

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Since 2005/06, the team that wins the game in the shootout gets a “goal for” added to its team total, even though no individual player gets credit for the goal.

The Oilers have 65 shootout wins, meaning if you added up every single player’s goal stats, without the “goal for” number, the total would be 9,930.

But the NHL tells me that shootout-winning goals do indeed count towards the team total. The league considers the Oilers franchise total to be 9,995.

So the Oilers 10,000th goal will likely be scored Thursday against Nashville or Saturday in Minnesota.

But what happens if the Oilers beat Nashville 5-4 in a shootout? The league says the players who scores the game-deciding goal in the shootout should be celebrated as scoring goal 10,000, even though it wouldn’t show up in his individual goal stats.