There’s one big reason that Kris Knoblauch’s Edmonton Oilers will be even better this season: championship-level defensive play.
The Oilers played their best defensive hockey of the McDavid/Draisaitl era under Knoblauch in the 2024 playoffs.
In the 25 games of the playoff run, they limited opposing teams to just 2.6 goals per game. That’s even better than the Todd McLellan Oilers in the 2017 playoffs, 2.69 goals against in 13 games.
McLellan had that 2017 team playing outstanding defence largely on the strength of solid goaltending by Cam Talbot and a strong Top 4 defence in Andrej Sekera, Kris Russell, Oscar Klefbom and Adam Larsson. If Sekera and Klefbom had not suffered major injuries in those playoffs, it’s highly likely that Edmonton team would have kept on winning, rather than collapse and fall out of the playoffs in the following two seasons.
I don’t see Knoblauch’s Oilers collapsing this coming year. Instead, I see them getting better, largely because Knoblauch appears to be an outstanding teacher of zone tactics. As all his Oilers, from Connor McDavid to Mattias Ekholm, from Leon Draisaitl to Darnell Nurse, come to fully understand their defensive responsibilities in Knoblauch’s zone defence, there’s no reason they can’t build on their success and challenge to become the top defensive team in the NHL.
After Knoblauch took over as head coach last year in mid-November, Edmonton was the fifth best defensive team in the NHL the rest of the way, giving up just 2.68 goals per game (with the Winnipeg Jets leading the way at jus 2.24 goals against per game).
Knoblauch will finally have a full training camp to instil his defensive systems and philosophy. He’ll have players keen to do all they can to raise their games so that they can win the Cup in the 2025 playoffs. It will be hard for Edmonton to get any better on offence, so the low-hanging fruit here is to cut down incrementally on Grade A shots, 5-alarm shots and goals against, and for Stuart Skinner to raise his game another notch in net.
In the 2024 playoffs, Knoblauch had his team playing tight defensive hockey, giving up just 5.1 Grade A shots per game, down from the 7.8 per game they gave up under Knoblauch in the regular season. On the most deadly of all shots, the 5-alarmers, the Oilers also improved from 6.1 against per game in the regular season to just 4.8 against per game in the playoffs.
Of course, there will be some challenges in improving Edmonton’s defence. Darnell Nurse has got to turn his game around, fully executing Knoblauch’s system. Stuart Skinner has to find more consistency and cut down on the length of any slump. A number of high skill forwards have to fully commit to hardcore, unrelenting defensive hockey, which isn’t always easy for born-to-score players. But the Oilers have a super solid top pairing in Ekholm and Evan Bouchard. They have a promising goalie in Skinner. They got some great checkers and penalty killers at forwards in Adam Henrique, Derek Ryan, Mattias Janmark and Connor Brown. They’ve got veterans who have played great defence in the playoffs, know how to get it done, and know it’s crucial to winning games.
And, again, they’ve got a coach in Knoblauch who appears to fully grasp cutting edge NHL defensive zone tactics and has the ability to teach those concepts to his team.
If the system is as sound as I believe it to be, the challenge of replacing Cody Ceci, Vincent Desharnais and Philip Broberg on defence won’t be quite so daunting.
I note that Florida’s overall system of play with hard forechecking and a fierce neutral zone press covered up for holes in its d-men corp, such as a lack of elite skating mobility in most of the Panthers defenders. Their smarts, their aggression and team’s system papered over that issue. The Oilers should be able to do the same with some of their liabilities on defence in 2024-25.
In this way, the Oilers will compete for the Stanley Cup not so much by emulating the great run-and-gun Oilers teams of the 1980s, but by following the path of Edmonton’s great rival of that time, the New York Islanders, a team that could score with almost any other team of that era but could shut it down in crunch time like no other.
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