At its core, the Edmonton Oilers have all the chemical ingredients it takes to make success in the NHL.
They wouldn’t have gotten to Game 7 of last year’s Stanley Cup final otherwise.
This year, however, the team still is trying to rediscover the winning formula with just a handful of points to show for its first seven games.
All of a sudden, the things that seemed so easy that they were taken for granted during last year’s magical playoff run have evaporated into thin air.
Sure, Connor McDavid is still Connor McDavid and is right back to his point-per-game tricks.
But how does his wingman, Zach Hyman, fresh off the first 50-goal season of his career as one of three top scorers a year ago, have a grand total of zero points heading into Friday’s game (7 p.m., Sportsnet One) against the visiting Pittsburgh Penguins?
How has the league’s best penalty kill in those playoffs come out of the gates as the league’s worst so far this season?
How does the power play go from historical highs all of two seasons ago, to barely converting on 10% of its opportunities now?
Obviously, pieces have changed here and there as the team tries to balance a top-heavy salary-cap situation that is only going to grow in complexity over time. But it’s still the same dressing room as last year with the same leadership group in it. The same goal in mind. And a freshly drawn road map from last year to follow in order to get there.
So, what has changed in having it all come together in the laboratory that is making it all seem so scientifically impossible here?
In other words, what happened to this team’s chemistry?
“I guess it’s different for different guys or lines,” said Adam Henrique, picked up at last year’s trade deadline to appear all up and down the Oilers lineup over the playoff run.
But he was easily his most effective centring a third line with Mattias Janmark and Connor Brown, who together acted as a catalyst whenever the Oilers’ high-octane offence hit the ditch or the team simply needed to spark its ignition.
And it took no time to find chemistry together as the group, going from zero to 60 immediately, and remained together despite all three set to become free agents over the summer because they knew the whole was more than the sum of its parts. And what they had together couldn’t just be found anywhere.
“It just feels easy, I guess, when things are just kind of flowing and coming together and seem to be clicking and you’re just on the same page,” Henrique said. “As a line, we could want to have a little more impact than we have so far on the games.
“But we know it’s there and it’s just a matter of finding it and putting it together for 60 minutes.”
The trio, like the rest of the Oilers lineup — both forwards and defence — has since been split up, brought back together and moved around again over the past couple weeks as head coach Kris Knoblauch tries to recapture that chemical spark somewhere — anywhere — in the lineup to help return to their winning ways.
The danger in looking for chemistry, of course, is trying too hard to find it.
“Oh, yeah. You can always overthink. And when you’re doing that too, it can kind of snowball the other way,” Henrique said. “Sometimes you’ve just got to go out and play. Play a hard, simple game and that bottom line of having that work ethic and just kind of letting everything else fall into place.”
Easy, but hard.
Try, but let it happen.
It’s no wonder achieving chemistry is such an elusive factor in sports.
Heck, we don’t even know where such a thing originates. Is it something that gets stumbled upon or can it only be created?
“A lot of it is the players’ strengths,” said Knoblauch, who came in midway through last year and used the ingredients he was given to get off to a better start than any other head coach in Oilers history, finishing the season with a .703 win percentage. “If you’ve got three skilled players playing together, that might be beneficial in keeping the puck, but in the NHL, you always need somebody going to the net.
“So, you have to think of that and who’s going to score the goals? Do you have a shooter? So, to answer your question, I think it’s both.”
What else did you expect?
“Chemistry can be created. The more time you spend with somebody, the more you get to know what they want to do and what plays they’re thinking,” Knoblauch said. “But the ultimate identity of a player is who they pretty much are and you need a certain element or mixture of ingredients, whether it’s a D-pair or especially a line, to work.”
The problem, of course, is the patience it takes to come up with the correct concoction isn’t always a luxury available to head coaches in the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world of professional sports.
“It’s tough,” Knoblauch said. “You want things to build and build that chemistry but if things aren’t working out, you’ve also got a team full of players looking at, ‘When’s my opportunity if this isn’t working?’
“So, as a coach you’ve got to balance on letting things progress, but part of it is holding players accountable and letting other guys have that opportunity.”
After all, they’re called mad scientists for a reason.
E-mail: [email protected]
On Twitter: @GerryModdejonge