High time for Knoblauch’s Oilers to rediscover their defensive chops

Article content

Two games into the third annual opening-round playoff series between Edmonton Oilers and Los Angeles Kings, some familiar themes are already humming along.

Among them, nagging questions about the Oilers defensive game and goaltending, and a more specific one about the club’s baffling lack of success in overtime, especially at home.

Article content

Let’s start with the bigger picture and then zoom in on the latter, related issue.

Article content

The not-so-magic number: 4 goals against

The Oilers of the Connor McDavid era have always been able to score goals. Prevention of same has been more problematic.

One fairly reliable indicator for success or failure has been ability to hold the opposition to 3 goals or fewer. When they do this, the Oil are generally fine. When they don’t? It’s trouble.

Let’s start by reviewing their results over the last three regular seasons, each the full 82 games:

The contrast is stark. Over the past 3 years the Oilers have been successful in holding opponents to 3 goals or fewer in 66% of their games, posting a phenomenal .855 points percentage in those games. But when allowing 4+ in the other 34%, that percentage is a putrid .238.

In 2023-24, the Oilers made further progress, cutting the number of 4+ GA games to 25, just 15 in the 64 games after American Thanksgiving. Their points rate in the 57 good defensive games was a sensational .868; in the 25 bad ones, a terrible .100.

Worth noting that the Oil held the bad guys to 3 or fewer in every single contest of their epic 16-game winning streak, which was characterized by patient, organized defensive play and timely scoring.

Article content

Article content

Surely, one might think, surely the key to playoff success in Edmonton might be to follow the same formula? Yes indeed… one might think.

In reality, the Oilers have persistently had trouble delivering consistent (good) defensive results in the postseason, an issue that has persisted early in the current playoffs. Drawing the line at the same threshold, Edmonton has consistently failed to hold opponents to 3 or fewer in even half of their playoff games, year after year.

These results are for all 5 seasons of the Ken Holland era, in which it’s worth pointing out his club made the postseason every single time. Once there, however, their ability to keep the puck out of their net has taken a hit.

The squad was eliminated straight away in both 2020 and 2021, winning just 1 of 8 games while yielding at least 4 goals in 5 of them.

In more recent times, the club has met with limited playoff success, winning a pair of series in 2022 and one in 2023. Obviously 2024 is too early to call, but we include early results here. Worth noting that they have exactly split their 30 games with 15 wins and 15 losses; they are 11-1 in games allowing 3 or fewer, but 4-14 in those they don’t. Worse, the latter have been a clear majority of games in each of those seasons. Not a formula for success.

Article content

In particular, both Colorado in 2022 and Vegas in 2023 scored 4+ times in each of their 4 wins that eliminated Edmonton from the competition. The only games Edmonton won in either series, both against Vegas, involved them holding the Golden Knights to a single goal in each.

So, they can do it. Not often enough, unfortunately.

Overall, the Oilers have been lit up for 4+ in 23 of 38 playoff games in the Holland era, or 61% of all games. On average they’ve allowed 3.68 goals per game, which frankly is uncompetitive for the biggest prize of all.

Speaking of which, how have the Stanley Cup champions performed in this area over that span? In this case we can omit early results from 2024 entirely, since we don’t know who’s going to win the grail. But unsurprisingly, the prior 4 champions sported far better defensive records than have the Oilers:

90 playoff games combined for those 4 champs. 70 times they held their opponents under 4, going 58-12 in those games. Just 20 times, or 22% of their games, did they allow 4+, going 8-12. Exactly 50 more good defensive games than bad, with exactly 50 more wins in those games.

Article content

Each of those teams, like the Oilers, were capable of pulling out the occasional 5-4 or 6-5 win; moreover, they might drop the odd 3-2 affair along the way. The big difference was the frequency of good vs. bad defensive games. A net 22% of the latter for the various champs; a miserable 61% for the Oil. Not close to good enough.

Overtime

Then there is the vexing case of sudden-death overtime, the most exciting aspect of the Stanley Cup playoffs since forever. Logic dictates teams “should” win 50% of those games, yet for whatever reason the Oilers have fallen far, far short of that statistical mean. In this case we’ll stretch back to 2015, the year that Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Darnell Nurse all became full-time Oilers and changed the face of the team.

That adds just one more playoff season to the mix, but it was a precursor for the OT headaches that continue to persist into the mid-2020’s.

14 overtime games. 3 wins. 11 losses. Ugh.

Half of those 14 games were decided in under 5 minutes (red font), with the Oilers losing every single time.

Even worse, the Oilers have posted a wretched 1-7 record at Rogers Place (blue background), including the last 6 in a row,  losing the large majority of those games in the blink of an eye. Just twice in those 8 games has the overtime period lasted as long as 5 minutes, with the home team winning 1 and losing 1. But they have had no joy at all, 0-6 in the too-many games that ended quickly.

Article content

Consider that in the last 4 years, the 5 overtime games at Rogers Place lasted a combined 18:03, less than a single period of hockey. Yet in that span, the Oilers have been outscored 5-0.

Now contemplate that there was just 1 home period all season long in which the Oilers allowed 5 goals (vs. Tampa), and 2 of those were empty netters! Hard to say what it is about 5v5 overtime that causes the squad to rapidly spit the bit, but those results are both terrible and undeniable.

So what’s to be done?

…is a question to be asked about the poor defensive games as a whole, and the awful overtime results in particular.

Let’s just focus on the current campaign. The powerhouse squad that held their last 14 consecutive opponents at Rogers Place to 3 goals or fewer — including the Kings, twice — are 0 for 2 in that respect early in the playoffs. The defensive patience which emerged in their game under Knoblauch seems to be on vacation at the worst possible time.

Bear in mind, this is a veteran team now. Yet by and large it’s the experienced guys who are getting burned for the goals against. On Wednesday night, for example, Edmonton’s highly-experienced (>2000 NHL games) second line of Leon Draisaitl between Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Warren Foegele got lit up for a trio of goals against in a single period, all of them quick counterstrikes. Poor puck management and disorganized defensive coverage in transition were common elements to each.

Article content

Then in overtime, it was the über-experienced (>1400 GP, many of them together) D pairing of Darnell Nurse and Cody Ceci who got caught out. Ceci pinched up to the red line in a failed bid to cut out a stretch pass, Nurse didn’t rotate to the middle of the ice to cover, and wham! There’s good old Anze Kopitar in alone on goal, calmly picking the top corner behind Stu Skinner and inflicting yet another “sudden death” to the Rogers Place faithful. From the comfort of my couch, it looked like an old-fashioned failure to communicate, a very fundamental mistake at any time in a game, never mind that point where the next goal means everything.

Just like that, the visiting squad that scored all of 3 goals in 2 visits during the season potted 9 in back-to-back playoff games and escaped with both a split and home-ice advantage in the series.

The 5 skaters named average nearly 700 NHL games of experience and almost $6 million in cap hit. It’s reasonable to expect better from them in crunch time.

Can the Oilers recover? Yes of course they can; during the season they had a few short defensive slumps of a few games before returning to long stretches of very solid play. But in the playoffs, a “few games” is way too long to be out of sorts. They need to clean up their defensive game forthwith.

Recently at the Cult of Hockey

STAPLES: Oilers crushed by the same old thing that crushed them all year

LEAVINS: Player grades in Game 2 OT loss to the Kings

STAPLES: Anxiety in Los Angeles with criticisms after Game One loss

McCURDY: Oilers dominate Kings in Game 1: Player Grades

Article content