If you are a fan of the Edmonton Oilers and were following the news in the offseason, you would surely have heard of the additions to the team, were excited by the news, then maybe got a little sick of all the constant, premature, optimism. The Oilers entered this year at the top of essentially every sports outlets “favourites to win the Cup” rankings, as well as being the favourite on sports betting sites.
This 2–3 start is far from what everyone was expecting. In true Canadian sports media fashion, when the Oilers started the season 0–3, losing to the Calgary Flames for that third loss, everyone and their dog lost their mind. University of Alberta hospital was inundated with patients inexplicably screaming…
Now that the Oilers have a couple wins under their belt, and all the blood pressure machines have had their tops reattached, it’s time to take a look at how those promising additions to the team are working out.
A tale of two stories
The Oilers so far in the season are a very odd team. There are no two ways about it, by the eye test they don’t look good. The first three games it looked like they were skating through thick porridge (remember folks, instant oats should be completely submerged before a minute and five seconds in the microwave, don’t let the dangers of cement-like porridge make you late for work).
Even the wins were not very convincing—the Oilers still looked slow except for brief sections where they looked like themselves: the tying Evan Bouchard goal at the end of the Philadelphia game for example.
On the other hand, if you looked at the Oilers current possession and shot metrics, you would predict that they were undefeated. Corsi %, Fenwick %, Shots for %, xGF %, scoring chances %, high danger scoring chances %, are all miles over 50%. These are the stats of a team who is dominating the flow of the game. The only disappointing stats are those concerning actual goals. For this reason, expect the Oilers’ poor record to be reversed. Not much of a prediction since it has started already.
Podkolzin still needs to prove himself
Vasily Podkolzin started the season as perhaps the least exciting of the newbies. Though he was drafted 10th overall in Vancouver and had a solid rookie season, he has trended downwards since then. He was still a question mark in training camp, one of a few options to fill out the fourth line. He made the team and started the year on the fourth line. After a mittful of line shake-ups he finds himself on the second line, left wing to Ryan Nugent-Hopkins at centre and Viktor Arvidsson at right wing.
Podkolzin hasn’t looked awful, you can tell he’s hungry to prove himself, so the second line minutes may be a good test for him. His underlying on-ice metrics are actually all outstanding, first on the team in corsi% and xGF%, second in SF%. This is all well and good but he still needs to prove it where it counts and he still sits at 0 points.
Though a lot is not expected of Podkolzin, he is still young and may still be able to prove himself worthy of 10th overall consideration he received.
Where is Arvidsson?
Viktor Arvidsson is another past producer who is without a point this season. Five games in is no time to start sharpening the pitchforks though, especially when three of the games were losses. Arvidsson was brought on to the Oilers this year to help with the depth scoring, having scored over 60 points twice, nearly three times. For this reason a bigger start was expected from Arvidsson, just as it was for the Oilers themselves.
Arvidsson has similar underlying stats to most of the rest of the Oilers. Though not quite as impressive as Podkolzin’s, they are still very high, and he is one of only eight players on the team who has been on the ice for as many or more goals for as against. An impressive feat since the Oilers are currently being outscored 20–11. Arvidsson was one of the bright spots in a few of the early losses and has been one of the more consistent players, if not the most prolific.
Skinner is meeting expectations
Finally, a new player who has lit the lamp. Jeff Skinner is currently tied with Leon Draisaitl for second most points on the team with four, none of them on the power play, which is encouraging, though almost nobody on the team has any power play points. Skinner is the other player that Edmonton acquired for the purpose of depth scoring. The year before last, on a bad Buffalo team, he put up 82 points, this is by no means out of the question for him this year either. He has four points in five games while Edmonton is scoring 2.2 GF/GP, that is likely to rise when they get back to last years form of 3.56 GF/GP.
Skinner also has very solid underlying metrics, above where you would expect them to be for how the team is currently performing, or even where you would expect them to be at the end of a successful season. Skinner appears to be a man happy to be on a team with real playoff hopes and aspirations. I have a feeling that as the team gets back to better play, Kris Knoblauch may break up the power-house first line of Draisaitl, McDavid, and Hyman, and reform the Skinner, Draisaitl, Arvidsson line. It would be interesting to see what the line could do with a little more confidence and swagger.
Too early to judge Emberson
Ty Emberson was a big question mark coming into this season. The 24-year-old is only in his second season, only having played 30 games last year, and was drafted in the third round of the 2018 draft.
No offence to Emberson, but right now Oilers fans would rather have Philip Broberg back, who has put up five points in as many games, tied for fifth in scoring by a defenceman. On the other hand, Emberson appears to be clicking on the third pairing with Brett Kulak. The pair have the best xG% of any Edmonton pairing with significant time together, even better than Bouchard and Mattias Ekholm.
Emberson is in a similar boat to Podkolzin, though he hasn’t seen a disappointing dip in his game, he is still young and not a lot is expected of him right now. Edmonton may have stumbled upon a very steady, reliable low pairing man. His first games have not wowed by any means, and he has been on the ice for four goals against, second most on the team (McDavid is first with five). This is likely to get better though as the team recovers from the poor start.
Stecher does have more potential
Though Stecher is not technically a new player, he played in only seven games last year with the Oilers so he is essentially new. There is one, very tentative, but promising stat to note about Stecher and that is that he is one of very few players who has a xG% over 50% while playing with Darnell Nurse. Nurse has been criticized many times in the past for not being defensively sound and is notorious for not being able to change that with any partner. This partnership is very new and Stecher’s underlying stats are not as impressive as the rest of the teams, but his GF% is better than a lot of the teams. More time is needed to see how he will fare in Edmonton. Personally I am in his corner, I don’t believe he has been given ice time proportionate to his potential.
It’s important to remember that only five games have past, just as it wasn’t time for panicking when the Oilers were 0–3, it isn’t time to make final judgements about the five new faces in the Oilers roster. One thing I’m willing to put money down on is that Edmonton will continue to quickly turn the season around. Soon the flood gates will open and a lot of these new players who may not have impressed will look a lot different.
stats from NHL.com, naturalstattrick.com, and moneypuck.com
