The Edmonton Oilers are a discombobulated bunch right now.
Outside from their two best players being far and away their two best players, the rest of the roster has taken a noticeable step back from last year’s run to the Stanley Cup Final.
Ever since embarking on a five-game losing streak coming out of the 4 Nations Face-Off, pucks haven’t been going in for them, unless you count mistakes that end up in their own net.
And those are the kind of mistakes that tend to compound on the way to losing six of seven heading into Thursday’s game against the Montreal Canadiens.
It’s a stark contrast from the well-oiled machine that went 22-6-2 between the end of November and the end of January.
But even when they were rolling on that momentum-fueled run reminiscent of last year’s eight- and 16-game winning streaks, Head coach Kris Knoblauch was constantly under the hood fine tuning his lineup.
The problem is, when those top two guys are scoring 35 per cent of your goals and 32 per cent of your overall points — basically a full one-third of your entire offensive output on the season — well, let’s just say it hasn’t exactly proven to be the most successful formula for a sustainable run through the playoffs.
So, Knoblauch — who had yet to see anything close to a five-game losing skid since being called up in mid-November of last year to turn the Oilers’ season around — went into the garage and pulled parts from here and put them there in efforts to have that high-octane output flow through more than the top two lines.
And that meant included moving top guys down, sometimes leapfrogging the line below them entirely, in order to give a boost closer to the bottom.
There were times when Connor McDavid wasn’t playing with either Zach Hyman or Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, his right- and left-hand men who — although they sit No. 3 and No. 4 in team scoring, respectively — are on pace to earn 45 per cent and 31 per cent fewer points than a year ago.
But out of Knoblauch’s two big guns, it’s Leon Draisaitl who hasn’t had much in the way of continuity on his wings, as the second line has been a turnstile of wingers. While the right side was mainly due to Viktor Arvidsson being injured for much of the early part of the season, Draisaitl’s left wing has looked like spaghetti on the wall this year, and none of the wet noodles have stuck.
Whether it was all the tinkering that directly contributed to the backfire the Oilers have had lately, or not, it certainly hasn’t helped with continuity week-to-week, or even game-to-game, as it is difficult to develop any real momentum-building chemistry when the elements are constantly being changed.
“There’s been a lot more fluctuation than we’d like,” Knoblauch said. “After the Tampa game, we wanted to more solidify roles. Have guys in their chair, I think that’s important.
“In January, there was a lot of line fluctuation because we wanted to give the guys a lot of opportunity to step up and play and see if there’s some chemistry with other players.”
Now that times are tough, Knoblauch has been trying to dig his team out of the ditch by taking the opposite approach and keeping more familiar faces together in efforts to help gain some traction.
“There was a lot of up and down, and I don’t think it helped our team,” Knoblauch said. “I think it maybe caused some confusion on roles and what’s expected of them.
“So now, moving forward hopefully we have less line fluctuation. Absolutely, there are going to be some lineup changes, guys moving up and down a little bit, but certainly not to the extent that we were doing in January. We’re coming down to the latter half of the season and we feel it’s important that we have more of an identity at each line.”
The shift in strategy comes at a time of imminent change with Friday’s NHL trade deadline, while a couple of callups had to be made to Bakersfield of the American Hockey League ahead of Thursday’s game against the Montreal Canadiens (7 p.m., TSN2, Sportsnet West) due to injury.
New acquisition Max Jones got in the lineup to make his Oilers debut after being acquired Tuesday from the Boston Bruins along with fellow forward Trent Frederic, who is out with an ankle injury.
“When I first heard the rumblings that it was going to be Edmonton a couple of weeks back, and that they were interested, I kind of had goosebumps knowing the culture here, where the team’s been and what they’ve done and how they play as a team,” Jones said. “It was kind of a lot of racing thoughts and that it would be awesome to go there.”
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On Twitter: @GerryModdejonge