The numbers behind another slow start for the Oilers
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The Edmonton Oilers are becoming familiar with slow starts.
Last season, the Oilers came up one game short of winning the Stanley Cup. The run was so dominant that you would be excused for forgetting how grim the opening stretch of their regular season was, where Edmonton collected just five points in their opening 12 games. It was ugly, and culminated in a coaching change.
As for this season, it’s only been three games, but there is some concern with how the team has looked. After being detonated on by the Winnipeg Jets in the opener 6-0, the Oilers dropped a winnable game against the Chicago Blackhawks 5-2, and then lost to their Alberta rival Calgary Flames on Sunday night 4-1.
It goes without saying that any time you are 12 goals underwater in just three games, there are problems.
What’s a bit hard to disentangle, at least for now, is how much puck luck has exacerbated this issue – especially over such a small sample of games. But the Oilers shooting and save percentage splits are extraordinary outliers at the moment.
Edmonton’s shooting 3.2 per cent in all situations; 32nd in the NHL (Utah currently leads the league with a similarly outlandish 20.8 per cent conversion rate)
Edmonton’s goaltenders are stopping just 78.3 per cent of shots; 31st in the NHL (Winnipeg currently leads the league on Connor Hellebuyck’s work, stopping 97.6 per cent of shots)
Every team, no matter how talented, can go through dramatic swings in puck luck over several games, and the Oilers may well be exhibiting that out of the gate.
Part of the reason you want to see more games from the Oilers to assess just how talented this team is – and how big any holes may be – is their expected goal rates are much kinder than their real goal differentials, which tends to correlate with future rebounds in performance:
Games are won in real goals, but the point here is that this Edmonton team isn’t being territorially outplayed. Every shot they are taking is finding the crest on a goalie’s chest, and every shot they are conceding is finding the back of the net, a nightmare combination for any team in the league.
But if we are willing to give Edmonton some benefit of the doubt here, and I think we should for the reasons above, then we also need to be cognizant of where potential issues may be.
As in recent seasons past, the part of this lineup I’m concerned about is behind the team’s top defensive pairing.
Consider just how remarkably disparate the results are from Edmonton’s first pairing (Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard), versus their other regularly used pairing (Darnell Nurse and Travis Dermott):
There is tremendous underlying context with these splits.
The Ekholm and Bouchard pairing, which has been a force for some time now, also gets the benefit of playing a lot of even-strength minutes with the team’s big guns – Connor McDavid’s line is most commonly in front of them, and when they hit the ice, it tends to be all offence all the time. The superstar effect of McDavid alone will inherently elevate the numbers of everyone he plays with, including the defensive pair.
That’s not the case for the Nurse pairing, which for years has been thrust into the “tougher minutes,” typically playing with the Oilers middle-six forwards. Nurse and Dermott will see intermittent minutes with the team’s top scorers, but by and large it’s defensive forwards in front. This season, Adam Henrique and Mattias Janmark have been the most common forwards with the team’s second pair.
I don’t need to expand further as to how significant a quality of teammate drop-off that is. And given that context, both pairings need to be held to different standards. The problem is that performance standard for the team’s second pairing is miles away from what they are producing. You cannot have a pairing regularly fed heavy minutes outscored (and just as importantly considering the sample of games, outchanced) at such an alarming rate.
How much you apportion this issue to the oft-beleaguered second pairing in Edmonton versus the mixed bag of forwards they are playing with is subject to debate, but this is where the team has looked unimpressive.
It’s also where the coaching staff’s focus will be as the Oilers try to erase a disappointing opening week.
Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey, Hockey Reference