You will never guess the Edmonton Oilers penalty kill aces for 2023-24

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This in from Jonathan Willis, a former colleague at the Cult of Hockey and a fine occasional writer at The Athletic, a stat that got my attention in relation to Darnell Nurse on the penalty kill.

Wrote Willis:

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Oilers defencemen at 4v5 over the last 25 games:

Ceci: 59 minutes, -7
Nurse: 50 minutes, -15 (!)
Desharnais: 46 minutes, -6
Ekholm: 46 minutes, even (!!)
Kulak: 23 minutes, -2

It’s long past time for Ekholm/X to be the top PK tandem and for Nurse’s PK minutes to be reduced.

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My take

1. In tracking Nurse at even strength since the All-Star break I’ve noticed a marked drop off in his play at even strength, though he’s been gradually trending upwards in the past month, give or take one horrid game in Dallas. Willis’ numbers appear to indicate Nurse’s struggles on the penalty kill mirror his struggles at even strength.

I’ll take it as a given he’s struggled since the All-Star break at both aspects of his game, even strength and on the PK, and largely for the same reason — he’s been too aggressive and him himself out of position too often.

2. That said, is Willis correct that Ekholm should move ahead of Nurse in the PK pecking order? If you are just hoping to move out a slumping player for one who is at the top of the game, the answer appears to be clear, that Ekholm should get more PK time than Nurse.

At the same time, it’s notoriously difficult to rate a player’s work on the PK. For one thing, even season-long sample sizes of PK work tendsto be short, 100 to 200 minutes for most top PK players. One other issue: correlation does not equal causation, meaning that even if a player is on the ice for a high rate of PK goals against that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s at fault on all or even most of those goals against.

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It’s fair to ask just how responsible Nurse is for that -15 in recent months.

3. We attempt to fairly and accurately rate and rank players at the Cult of Hockey through video analysis, by studying repeatedly all Grade A shots and goals for and against the Oilers. We’ve been doing it since 2010-11.

One note of caution about our work in this regard: the penalty kill is by far the hardest aspect of the game to rate and rank fairly. Penalty killers are playing a zone of one sort or another, and their instantaneous judgments of when to attack a puck carrier or when to back off one are crucial to their success. But it’s hard to judge whether or not a defender has made the right choice at the right moment. PK success and failure is determined by split seconds and fractions of inches. That said, we give it our best shot.

4. To ascertain who is and isn’t doing his job well on the PK, I prefer to go with a number of stats, such as the rate of goals against a player is on the ice for (which Willis focuses on in his critique of Nurse), the rate of a player’s major individual mistakes on Grade A shots against and his rate of individual mistakes on goals against. For all these numbers, the bigger the sample size, the better.

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If a player does well in all three categories, I consider him to be a strong PK player. If he does poorly, I’ll question his effectiveness.

The quick answer is that Warren Foegele and Cody Ceci have done the best on the PK this year for the Oilers, with Darnell Nurse, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Vincent Desharnais doing the poorest. If you want more detail, read on.

5. When we look at the rate of on-ice goals against, we see the Oilers give up about one goal every four power players, and that players make mistakes on average on about half of the goals where they are on the ice.

6. The Oilers regular PKers who have been on the ice for the lowest rate of goals against are, in order, Warren Foegele, Ryan McLeod, Mattias Ekholm, Brett Kulak, Connor Brown, Mattias Janmark and Cody Ceci. They’re all below or at the team average in this regard.

The regulars on ice for the highest rate of goals against have been, in order, Vincent Desharnais, Derek Ryan, Darnell Nurse and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.

7. When we do video review to determine which players were at fault individually on the goals against, the players with the lowest rate of mistakes are, in order, Foegele, Ceci, Ryan, Kulak, Janmark, Ekholm, McLeod and Brown, all below or at the team average. The highest rate of mistakes on goals are Nugent-Hopkins, Nurse and Desharnais.

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8. The stat I put the most weight on is the rate of major mistakes on Grade A shots against on the PK.

The players who did best in this category are Foegele, Ceci, Kulak, McLeod, Janmark, and Ekholm. The players who did worst are Nurse, Desharnais, Brown, Ryan and RNH.

9. Who did relatively poorly in all three categories? Nurse, Desharnais and RNH.

Who did relatively well? Foegele, Ceci, Kulak, Ekholm, Janmark and McLeod, with Brown and Ryan having both stronger and weaker results.

An argument can be made then that Foegele and Ceci have been the Oilers two best penalty killers this year. On the left side of the defence, Ekholm had indeed moved past Nurse, and Kulak in limited minutes has also faired well.

At the Cult of Hockey

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