When the NHL stopped play to stage the 4 Nations Face-Off, it seemed that the 2-week break had come just in time for the Edmonton Oilers. The team had faced a brutal travel schedule while a bug ravaged the dressing room. By the time they dropped a 5-4 decision in regulation to Colorado Avalanche on Feb 07, they seemed to be running on fumes. I was convinced at the time that had the break not intervened, a losing streak was inevitable.
Fast forward two weeks to the resumption of play, and that vision has in fact become a reality. Looking not the tiniest bit refreshed, the Oilers laid down a pair of stinkers this past weekend, getting thumped 6-3 in Philadelphia, then 7-3 in Washington. Just like that, they’ve lost 3 straight games in regulation for the first time since the opening week of the season.
In the process, the squad has allowed 5+ goals in back-to-back-to-back games. That hadn’t happened in a season and a half; specifically, when they dropped consecutive games in 2023 Nov at Tampa Bay, Florida and Carolina by scores of 6-4, 5-3, and 6-3.
Guess which 3 teams the Oilers play next?
The Oilers wobble into the Sunshine State with their game in shambles, a malaise that extends from captain Connor McDavid through goaltenders Stu Skinner and Calvin Pickard and most of the roster in between.
Here are 6 alarming trends that have come to the forefront during their 6 February games.
6+ games without a regulation win
Let’s start with short and simple. The Oilers are officially 2-4-0 in February, with both wins coming in overtime early in the month. Including the shootout loss the squad absorbed vs. Detroit in its final January game, 7 games have been played since they won outright. That was a 4-2 victory over Seattle way back on Jan 27.
6 games of penalty killing failure
The Oilers have played 6 games in February in which their penalty kill has been nothing short of atrocious. The club has been shorthanded just 13 times in those games, but has yielded no fewer than 8 goals for a clearance rate of just 38%, which is to say, putrid. Those 8 PPGA are 3 more than any other NHL team this month. 2 other clubs have clearance rates in the 55% range in February, while all the rest are 67% or better.
Worse, the team has proven utterly incapable of killing the first minor penalty of each game, a failure that has occurred 6 (SIX!!!) games in a row. This isn’t just an “early in games” problem either; in those 6 games the Oilers first penalty came twice each in the first, second or third period. Whatever time in the game the striped arm finally went up, the Oilers weren’t up to the task. Many of those PPGA proved costly.
Calculated a different way, the Oilers have allowed powerplay goals at a rate of over 25 per hour in February. Only Washington and Vegas are remotely close, with all other teams being at half or less. 21 teams are in single digits. [Source]
Caveat
Worth noting that the other two clubs whose PK is on the rocks are both excellent, playoff-bound teams. Even good clubs have bad spells. Such is the nature of a small sample size which in the specific case of the Oilers is less than 20 minutes of hockey for the entire month. It’s obviously a problem that needs fixing — no doubt fans of the Capitals and Golden Knights would say the same thing just now — but don’t read too much into it.
Which sets the table for a larger issue…
6 games of poor defensive results
Edmonton’s defensive play has greatly improved during Kris Knoblauch’s time behind the bench, but during the recent slide that aspect has collapsed. Again, NHL stats for the month of February:
As was the case with the prior chart, “#1” here really means “#32”, or as some might call it, “DFL”. 4½ goals against per game, worse than proven bottom feeders Chicago, San Jose and Nashville, worse than everybody. Only 10 other teams are within 1.00 GA/GP.
I’ve kept the column of PK “success” from the source because it helps to inform how far the Oilers have fallen from the norm in this category in particular. Still, that’s just 8 of the 27 goals against, meaning more than 3 per game in non-PK situations.
6 games of iffy goaltending
While many fans and pundits point their fingers squarely at the goaltending as the root of all evil, this one sees a range of issues on the defensive side of the puck. Which does not exonerate the padded men, of course, who in concert with their team have both been struggling this last while. These February numbers extracted from their respective gamelogs:
Which simply put is not good enough.
4 games of Connor McDavid in a funk
That McDavid hasn’t been at the very top of his game this season is reflected by the fact he isn’t at the very top of the scoring race. He missed time to injury in October and to suspension in January. But in February his game has fallen off a cliff. In particular, the last 4 (NHL) games:
Offensive production is way off, but the ugliest results are found in the highlighted column at right, traditional plus/minus. McDavid has posted a ghastly dash-11 over that short span, which includes 3 consecutive games of -3. [Source]
To put that in perspective, McD had never previously logged 2 such games in succession before never mind 3. Indeed, he’s had 6 entire seasons in which he didn’t have 3 such games all year long!
McDavid has been a consistent outscorer throughout his career, landing in the +21 to +35 range in each of the last 4 seasons. A couple weeks ago he was tracking in a similar direction at +15. Now he’s down at +4 and trending sharply in the wrong direction.
The stat does of course have its critics due to a couple of weird decisions made by its innovators, Allan Roth and Dick Irvin, back in the 1940s. Their idea to count who was on the ice for all even-strength goals, for and against, proved to be a template for modern on-ice stats like Corsi. But the decision to include shorthanded (but not powerplay) goals, as well as goals scored at either end when the goalie is pulled, resulted in plenty of noise in the data.
In McDavid’s case, each of those -3 games was complicated by a GA scored in “other” situations: a shorty allowed to the Avalanche, empty netters to both the Flyers and Capitals. So let’s use modern fancystats to weed those out and focus strictly on 5v5 play. This source offers the additional insight of goals scored at both ends of the sheet rather than simply a net figure. And the recent numbers remain shocking:
Wowsa. The lousy shot shares are one thing, but what really jumps off the page is 4 straight games of identical goal shares, namely 0 for, 2 against. The game’s top offensive star has played 66.5 minutes of hockey in its most fundamental manpower situation, and his team hasn’t scored a single goal in that time while allowing 8. With McD on the bench over those same games, the Oilers hold a 9-5 advantage in 201 minutes of 5v5 play.
Explain that. I can’t.
MASSIVE caveat
These are of course McDavid’s last 4 NHL games. They sandwich 4 other games that he played on a different stage at mid-month. He was a feature player of the 4 Nations Face-Off, where he was routinely described (in multiple languages) as the best player in the sport. Then #97 went out and made his case, finding the scoresheet in each game and leading his club in scoring with 3-2-5. He capped it off by delivering the clutchiest of clutch goals, in overtime of the tournament final. He clearly put everything he had into the effort.
As an old fart who has rooted for Team Canada even longer (since 1964) than I have for the Oilers (since their inception in 1972), that’s a trade-off I’m prepared to accept. A satisfying ending to a best-on-best international tournament will stick with me a lot longer than a bizarro slump in the dog days of a long NHL season.
Perhaps the Oilers would have been better served to give their main man the weekend off. No surprise of course that he insisted on playing, but who could have foreseen results like those?
2 games of weirdo shot splits
Which brings us to the pair of games since the restart in which the Oilers have looked flat-out awful, with results to match. A 6-3 loss at Philadelphia, a 7-3 defeat in Washington, Convincing results, and deserved ones.
What stood out about both was that the Oilers were badly outshot, 32-18 and 34-25.
The team that had led the league in shots per game (32.6) at the break mustered just 43 in total. But the really odd part of it was the distribution of those shots. Against the Flyers, Edmonton forwards mustered just 8 shots the entire game, while the defencemen had 10. Against the Caps, an ever more extreme split of 10 shots by forwards, 15 by defenders.
For the 2 games combined, Edmonton’s forward corps mustered a paltry 18 shots in total, just 42% of the club’s overall total. This from a forward corps that through 55 games averaged 22 shots per game and some 67% of the club’s overall total.
What does it mean? By eye, the Oilers had difficulty penetrating the defensive set of either Eastern Conference opponent, and all too often settled for a shot from the point when they managed to get a shot at all. Far too much of both games was played without the puck, and much of that in their own end of the sheet or heading in that direction.
The flaws in Edmonton’s game just now are real and they are spectacular. What seems lacking to these old eyes is the fundamental defensive structure, to earn possession of the puck and then advance it on the counterattack. To make a play when it is there, and when it isn’t to put the puck in good places. Instead Oil fans have watched with increasing dismay a cavalcade of turnovers, weak backchecks, poor line changes, spotty zone coverage and so on.
For Coach Knobaluch and his charges, it’s time to get back to the basics. And maybe to find Connor McDavid some new linemates.
Post script
…goes to Eric Friesen of the 99 Forever Podcast who reminds us all that the Edmonton Oilers are a good hockey team currently enduring a bad stretch. Even the best teams slump from time to time, and when they do it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture.
Let’s put it this way: I’d rather the Oilers had a run like this in February than in May or June. Present wobble notwithstanding, they remain a Stanley Cup contender.
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LEAVINS: 9 Things, Feb 23 edition
STAPLES: Player grades from beatdown in Washington
McCURDY: Player grades from beatdown in Philadelphia
and on Bluesky Social @brucemccurdy.bsky.social
Follow me on X-Twitter @BruceMcCurdy
and on Bluesky Social @brucemccurdy.bsky.social