Game Day 7 Oilers vs Hurricanes
This in from Bob Stauffer of the Oilers radio network, news that Troy Stecher is in for Ty Emberson.
The Edmonton Oilers vs Carolina:
RNH-McDavid-Hyman
J. Skinner-Draisaitl-Arvidsson
Janmark-Ryan-Brown
Podkolzin-Henrique-Perry
Ekholm-Bouchard
Dermott-Nurse
Kulak-Stecher
S. Skinner
Power play non-production
Edmonton’s power play, the best in the NHL over the past five years with a 28.5 per cent success rate, one of the best in NHL history, has collapsed in the first six games of the 2024-25 season.
Just now, it’s got some weak links on it. Or, to be more accurate, a few rusty hinges.
With the same group of players having so much success over the past five seasons — and as recently as the 2024 playoffs when it had a 29.3 per cent success rate — it’s hard to imagine the skill level of the players is an issue. All five members of the top group, Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Zach Hyman, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Evan Bouchard — are brilliant power players.
But they’re not performing brilliantly just now. After a short summer, with several of them recovering from significant playoff injuries, they’re not quite ready for the aggressive penalty-killing other teams are throwing at them.
NHL coaches have realized that the passive penalty-killing style used by the Los Angeles Kings in the 2024 playoffs against the Oilers is a recipe for getting scored on. They’ve started to harass the Oilers up and down the ice, a much better strategy, at least in the short term.
Last season, the Oilers averaged 1.36 Grade A shots per two power-play minutes, which is pretty much in line with what we’ve seen throughout their outstanding run of power play supremacy. This year they’re at just 0.93 Grade A shots per two minutes.
The team is down 32% per cent when it comes to creating Grade A shots on the power play.
Some bad puck luck/inaccurate shooting/great opposition goaltending has also come into play here. Edmonton’s shooting percentage on Grade A PP shots this year is just 8%, down from 26% last season.
When we look at individual performance on the power play, we see a few players struggling, in particular, to help manufacture Grade A shots. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins leads the way in this regard, with his rate of major contributions to Grade A shots dropping from .66 per two-minute power play last season to just 0.18 this season. He’s at less than one-third the rate of his Grade A shot creation compared to last season.
Connor McDavid is also down significantly, 0.58 per two minutes power play this year compared to 1.17 last season. The drops in the other three main power players, Draisaitl, Hyman and Bouchard, aren’t as drastic.
The drop in power play efficiency and success of both McDavid and RNH hints at what’s going wrong here. Teams are giving these two players far less time and space to make passes and both are just now struggling to adapt.
Edmonton’s power play typically sees Bouchard pass to either RNH or the free-lancing McDavid to kick off any power-play sequence. By aggressively checking these two players when they first get the puck, opponents are disrupting Edmonton’s usual flow.
So what to do? I’m still against changing out any of the top five power players. I doubt that’s the issue, though it could be both RNH and McDavid’s puckhandling and decision-making is a bit off early in the season. But they’ll both crank up that aspect of their games, I’m sure.
Do they need to change tactics?
My own thought is to counter aggression with aggression. If players are coming hard to McDavid and RNH, these defenders are more prone to get deked out. If McDavid starts deking them and taking the puck fast to the net, might that not work?
RNH is less adept at deking than McDavid (which player isn’t?), so his best strategy might be to quickly throw the puck at the net, where Hyman and Draisaitl might well outnumber a lone defender, or to quickly move it to Bouchard or McDavid for a quick shot. It may well be that Bouchard and McDavid need to work on their spacing when RNH has the puck, so that they’re in position to quickly pass or shoot once they get his return pass.
I’m not suggesting I’m certain I’ve got the right answers here. Perhaps some other strategies will work much better. Or maybe the only issue here is getting some rust off the hinges, and success will come when the players are all more settled into the season.
How do you see it?
P.S. The Oilers have signed first-round draft pick Sam O’Reilly to a three-year Entry Level Contract.
Staples on politics
At the Cult of Hockey
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