Scotty Bowman — who has the most wins and most Stanley Cup victories of any NHL coach — was once asked by star goalie Ken Dryden about what he considered to be the most important job of the coach.
“Getting the right players on the ice,” Bowman said.
How is Edmonton Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch doing in this regard? I’ll suggest he’s crushing it, with the exception of over-playing one big name Oilers forward just now.
In general terms, Knoblauch is getting the right players on the ice. He’s rewarding strong performances and giving less ice time to players who are struggling.
How do we asssess Knoblauch?
For the vast majority of players, their success as two-way players correlates well with the amount of even strength ice-time that Knoblauch hands them.
How do I rank two-way success? At the Cult of Hockey for 15 years now we’ve tracked every Grade A shot for and against the Oilers, then done extensive video reviews to ascertain which players made contributions to Grade A shots for and which players made mistakes on Grade A shots against. From this, we get a Grade A shots +/- per game (15 min ES) for each Oilers player.
This year Leon Draisaitl leads the team at +3.07 Grade A shots per game ES. This is the first time any Oilers player has been above +3 for this many games in a season. It’s a remarkable accomplishment, one for the ages in terms of two-way excellence.
On the wing Zach Hyman leads the way, +2.2 per game, a bit down from last year, but still mighty solid.
On defence — where the opportunities to contribute to Grade A shots are less than on the wing, but the chances of making a mistake on a Grade A shot against are higher given the enormous defensive responsibilities of d-men — Evan Bouchard leads the way, +0.33 per game.
Bouchard makes a high rate of contributions to Grade A shots per game and also leaks a lot of Grade A shots against, but overall, the team gets a major boost from him.
The results?
On defence, the top 5 d-men who do the best in their two-way play are given the exact right amount of ice time, first Bouchard at 20:07, then Nurse at 19:42, Ekholm, 19:33, Kulak, 18:29 and Klingberg, 17:05. The Oilers coaches are matching up performance and ice time exceedingly well here.
The same goes at centre. Draisaitl is out-performing McDavid but getting a bit less ice-time, but Henrique and Ryan slot in where they deserve to be. You could argue that Draisaitl should get more ice than McDavid just now — and he does in some games — but the variance here between performance and ice time is small, not a major issue. Our goal isn’t to be picky here but to look for major variances that might indicate a significant issue.
On wing, we find such a major variance. Hyman, Viktor Arvidsson and Vasili Podzolzin are all playing good-to-strong two-way hockey and they get about the expected ice time. The same goes for Kasperi Kapanen who is not playing that well and is the least used regular forward.
In the middle of the pack, though, we seen Ryan Nugent-Hopkins having a mediocre year in terms of two-way play, ranking just sixth for Oilers wingers, but getting the second most amount of ice time after Hyman.
Mattias Janmark, who is offensively challenged, and Jeff Skinner, who is defensively challenged, are also getting a bit too much ice, while Connor Brown and Corey Perry aren’t getting quite enough ice based on the quality of their play. That said, Brown and Perry were bumped up on the recent road trip.
We see the biggest variance between quality of performance and ice time awarded with RNH.
I’ll suggest the Oilers will better off bumping RNH down the roster to the third line, something we’ve seen in some recent games. At the same time, RNH’s results are confounded somewhat by one factor: he plays a significant amount of time at centre.
Centres have about the same offensive opportunity as wingers, but far more defensive responsibility, which means they’ll make on average more mistakes on Grade A shots against. This impacts RNH’s Grade A shots +/- per game to some extent when we compare him to pure wingers.
That said, I’ll still suggest that for now the team is better off with RNH is a less prominent role. Yes, he got three assists last night, and that bumped up his point per 60 even strength, but until he brings it more consistently on the wing and on defence and on the attack, players like Hyman, Arvidsson, Podkolzin, Perry, Brown and possibly Henrique are better bets on the wing in the Top 6.
At the Cult of Hockey
McCURDY: Game grades in big win over Rangers
LEAVINS: 9 Things, Mar 16 edition
STAPLES: Leon Draisaitl shows his MVP stuff in Oilers win over Islanders
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