The Edmonton Oilers have officially made it to the playoffs for the fifth year in a row and are on track to record their second best regular season in that time. A season that began with an abyssmal 2–9–1 record and a coaching change has turned into a chance for the Oilers to win their division for the first time in 37 years. This season has seen great production performances from Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Zach Hyman, Evan Bouchard, and Mattias Ekholm—with Ekholm and Bouchard already shattering their previous points totals, McDavid all but assured to break the 100-assist mark, and Hyman putting 50 in the back of the net.
Unfortunately for the Oilers and their fans, that play doesn’t always translate to the post-season. The Oilers have been frustrated these past four years, especially these past two years having gone up against the eventual Stanley Cup Champions. We’ll look at what went wrong the past few playoff runs and what the Oilers could improve on from this regular season.
Problems of the past: goaltending
The goaltending. I know you saw that coming from a mile away, and I know it brings up some ugly buried emotions, it’ll be alright, just breathe deep and we’ll get through this section together. This is the most obvious potential problem that may lead the Oilers to an early playoff exit. I hate to disparage a man before he’s even had the chance to prove himself but this is a big question mark. Stuart Skinner has had a solid season and should be commended for helping to turn the season around after the terrible start both he and the Oilers had. Since then he has been one the of the busiest goalies in the NHL, having played 55 games already. This doesn’t really bode well for the Oilers though as there is serious danger of him burning out.
Last year, Skinner started all twelve postseason games and Jack Campbell finished four of them. Skinner had a .883 save percentage (SV%) and a 3.68 goals against average (GAA) in those games. On the other hand Campbell, though not playing all that many minutes, had a .961 SV% and a 1.01 GAA. Calvin Pickard is having a solid season with a well above average .913 SV% and 2.38 GAA but has only appeared in 20 games this season, only seven of which were against teams currently in a playoff position, and two of those were in relief of Skinner. Pickard has never played a playoff game in the NHL. The positive way of phrasing that is that Pickard has not had the opportunity to play in the playoffs and therefore may turn out to be a magician, and that’s true. The negative way is that Pickard has never been the first or second string goalie on a playoff team. The point is that Pickard is a bolded, font size 40, doozie of a question mark and if Skinner isn’t cutting the cake, the Oilers are in big trouble.
Other potential worries
To be honest, after the goaltending, there isn’t a lot to nitpick from the Oilers recent playoff performances. As I said before, the past two years they have ran up against the eventual cup winner. One thing they need to do before the start of the playoffs is find some line consistency. If someone who knew nothing about hockey watched the last few games they would get the impression that the Oilers operated under the “first five to get on the ice” system. Only the San Jose Sharks have tried more line combinations than the Edmonton Oilers.
I wholeheartedly agree that since the trade deadline, Knoblauch needed to find which lines worked best with each other but now it’s time to settle on lines and let them find some chemistry. The Hyman-McDavid-RNH line is statistically one of the most dominant lines in the NHL, even better than Hyman-McDavid-Draisaitl in many statistics, though the latter hasn’t had as much time together. I believe Hyman-McDavid-RNH is the better option as it leaves Draisaitl open for a second line that needs to be watched almost as closely as the first. The Oilers have spent more time with this setup than otherwise. In any case they need to land on a set of lines and stick with it.
Keys to playoff success
Obviously, the first key to the playoffs is goaltending. I was a big proponent of the Oilers finding a backup goalie at the trade deadline, even if they had to give up decent prospects and assets to do it. It doesn’t matter how dominant your offence is, if you can’t stop the puck, you’re not likely to win games, and the future of that dominant offence is not certain. In fact, half of that dominant offence is only under contract for one more year and the other half only one more after that. From what I know about how competitive dominant offences are, they don’t really like losing in the second or third round every year. If it isn’t clear yet, “dominant offences” can be substituted for Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.
There is no way around the fact that if you want to do well in the playoffs, your goalie has to play well. In the last ten years, only three of the winning teams starting goalie had a SV% below .920 and the average of those over all ten years was .922. Another point is that in those ten years only three starters shared the net significantly. Campbell is capable of those numbers, but it’s safe to say that a lot rests on his young shoulders this post-season.
The second key should maybe be labeled key #1.5 as it closely pertains to the goaltending. One thing that seems pretty obvious about the goaltender position is that a good defensive team makes a goalies job a million times easier. It’s not uncommon for a goalie to have a great year, get traded to a poor team, then immediately have a poor year and vice versa. So what happened? That goalie got bonked on the head every day that summer till he just forgot everything he had learned since he was ten years old? You think Linus Ullmark’s Vezina winning, .938 SV%, 1.89 GAA season just happened to coincide with his team breaking the record for most wins and points in a season? Not likely.
A good defensive and offensive team is what allows a goalie to be great. A goalie isn’t going to see any shots while his offence keeps the puck is in the offensive zone, and he isn’t going to see many quality shots if his defence is keeping the shots to the outside and clearing the front of the net. This is what the Oilers need to do for Skinner. The Oilers already do well at controlling the puck as they have the third best Corsi in the league at 54.95% and at limiting high danger shots against as they are sixth best in the league there. They need to keep this up while bringing down their medium danger shots against as they currently sit 11th in the league. A shot from the medium danger zones with a good screen is just as deadly as a high danger shot.
The third and last key for the Oilers is to figure out the third line. A deep team is what you need for a long playoff run; you need to be able to rely on them to shut down one of the other teams best lines as well as be able to eat up a decent amount of minutes so your star players aren’t passing out on the ice come the third round. I wrote above about the importance of finding a line and sticking with it, as of right now, the third line is the most important project. The problem is that it has been tampered with so often that no one line has had the time to build any chemistry. Personally, Adam Henrique-Ryan McLeod-Corey Perry makes sense to me but no matter what the line is, past Stanley Cup winners have made it abundantly clear that the third line is integral a deep playoff run.
Stats accurate as of April 9, 2024 from NHL.com, MoneyPuck.com, and CapFriendly.com
Photo by Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire
