It’s been a tale told of the Edmonton Oilers for years now, and proclaimed exuberantly last year by Oilers’ doubtful: The Edmonton Oilers can only score on the power play. I always found this to be very poor criticism, if you have to criticize a team for being fantastic on the power play, then that team really can’t be doing too poorly, and you might be a nitpicker.
The Oilers were most certainly not poor on the power play, they were scooping up power play goals like my mom scoops up old VHS tapes at a garage sale. According to statmuse.com, last season the NHL average of penalties taken per game sat just under four, which means that, at a 2022–23 power play conversion rate of 32.4%, the Edmonton Oilers were essentially guaranteed a power play goal every game. I can assure you that every NHL coach since 1917 has had that dream before. In 5v4 power plays alone, the Edmonton Oilers ranked first in the NHL by 15 goals.
Note: Stats mentioned throughout the article are courtesy of NHL.com and MoneyPuck.com.
Assessing the Oilers’ power play
Power play dominance aside, it is concerning if a team is having a hard time scoring 5v5. Afterall, the majority of the game is played at 5v5, and technically, you are never guaranteed a power play at all. It would be difficult to say that the 2022–23 Oilers had a hard time scoring though, as they sent 24 more pucks past netminders than the second-ranked Boston Bruins—the same team that broke the all-time wins and points in a season record.
That being said, despite being ranked first in total goals scored, the Oilers were ranked fifth in 5v5 goals scored. Fifth! Out of 32! What a disaster! I’m not even sure the sun will rise tomorrow. Make no mistake, The 2022–23 Edmonton Oilers did not—emphasis on did not—have a problem scoring in any situation last year.
Oilers point shares by situation
If you are of the opinion that the Oilers would be better served by more dominant 5v5 play though, I have good news: The Oilers are trending in that direction this year. This graph shows how the share of total Edmonton points breaks down into power play points (blue), 5v5 points (orange), and all other situations (red) since the 2016–17 season through to this year.
The change is, admittedly, relatively subtle but you can see the orange 5v5 goals block widening from last year. This does mean that it is eating into the power play success though, which currently sits at 27% for fourth best in the NHL. As an interesting aside, this graph doesn’t show it, but the total points scored by the Oilers jumped by 97 from 2021–22 to 2022–23 and jumped by around 250 since the pre-Covid years.
Here are the raw point totals for reference as well.
Plugging in Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl’s numbers shows something similar to the team’s trends. This is not surprising as the saviour and his sidekick have the lion’s share of points on the Edmonton power play and in total. This is good for the two of them because you’d hate to see them finish astounding record-breaking careers only to have people say “They were great, but I don’t like how good they were when there was one fewer opponent on the ice.” In any case, here’s how their points were scored.
Connor McDavid point shares by situation
Leon Draisaitl point shares by situation
Edmonton versus league leaders
This is how Edmonton sits among the current playoff teams so far as a percentage of total goals scored at 5v5:
| Rank | Team | Percentage of goals scored at 5v5 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Philadelphia Flyers | 70.6% |
| 2 | Winnipeg Jets | 69.6% |
| 3 | Boston Bruins | 66.6% |
| 4 | Vancouver Canucks | 66.1% |
| 5 | Dallas Stars | 65.7% |
| 6 | Los Angeles Kings | 65.6% |
| 7 | Vegas Golden Knights | 65.4% |
| 8 | St. Louis Blues | 64.7% |
| 9 | Detroit Red WIngs | 64.4% |
| 10 | Edmonton Oilers | 63.3% |
| 11 | Toronto Maple Leafs | 62.9% |
| 12 | Carolina Hurricanes | 62.3% |
| 13 | New York Rangers | 61.25% |
| 14 | Colorado Avalanche | 60.6% |
| 15 | Tampa Bay Lightning | 59.2% |
| 16 | Florida Panthers | 56.7% |
The Oilers sit at a disenchanting 10th among playoff teams but this ranking does not match very well with the league standings. I wouldn’t use it to make your playoff bracket. So, as much as 5v5 play is important, in the end, the NHL is just like everyone else: they don’t ask how—they ask how many.
