The month of October has completed for the Edmonton Oilers which saw them end with a record of 5–5–1. A very middle of the road month with a lot of highs and lows. With the latest injury to Connor McDavid, the Oilers will be tested more than ever in the upcoming weeks. This includes the entire struggling forwards and the unthreatening power play.
Continuing on from my last article, I want to assess the types of chances the Oilers are giving up and if it’s losing them games or not. Today, I want to go over the Dallas, Carolina, Pittsburgh, and Detroit games. The reason I will not include the Columbus and Nashville games is we haven’t tracked those games yet. They will be included in next month’s edition of this article. Just a refresher of how we track shots.
@NHL_Sid, @Papa_Nurse25 on Twitter, and myself do the shot-tracking. @NHL_Sid started this shot-tracking project last season and was kind enough to let both PapaNurse and I work alongside him. These stats are coming from this project where we manually track each 5v5 shot attempt and shot on goal (blocked shots do not count). Here are the stats from the games I tracked. (Note: BT = Behind The Net, RR = Royal Road (across the slot in the offensive zone essentially—High Danger Chances come from here typically)
The passes within the offensive zone that completely crosses the royal road line you see highlighted are considered royal road passes.
Shots taken within the black grid are considered scoring chances. Any passes made within the trapezoid behind the net are considered BT passes.
A 4–1 loss against the Stars
Oilers shot attempts: 42
Stars shot attempts: 35 (31 in OZ)
Oilers 5v5 xG: 2.5
Stars 5v5 xG: 2.18
Note: The number within the brackets indicates how many shots came off that shot type.
| Shot Type | Assist Type | Chances | Goals | Odd-Man Rushes | Screens | Rebounds | Tips |
| Rush (9) | 1 RR | 6 | 1 | ||||
| Cycle (16) | 2 BT, 1RR | 11 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | |
| Forecheck (5) | 1 | ||||||
| Faceoff (1) |
The Oilers played relatively well against the Dallas Stars. They outchanced and outshot them 5v5, and would not allow a young, fast Dallas team to get set up on the rush for most of the game.
Where the Oilers did fail to show up though was when the Stars would start to cycle, a strength of a Pete Deboer ran hockey club. The amount of chances Dallas got, specifically in the second period of the game, killed some of the Oilers momentum which caused them to take a penalty and Stuart Skinner allowed a weak goal by Matt Duchene.
Evan Bouchard also had a bad giveaway in the third which gave Dallas an insurance goal and pretty much sealed the game for the Stars. You can also argue that the Oilers got goalied by Jake Oettinger, who had a GSAx of 1.50. All in all, the Oilers faced a combination of being goalied, stretches of good and horrendous play, and being a bit too soft in their own zone in the game.
A 3–2 overtime loss against the Hurricanes
Oilers shot attempts: 30
Hurricanes shot attempts: 38
Oilers 5v5 xG: 2.29
Hurricanes 5v5 xG: 3.17
| Shot Type | Assist Type | Chances | Goals | Odd-Man Rushes | Screens | Rebounds | Tips |
| Rush (12) | 1 BT, 1RR | 9 | 1 | 3 | 2 | ||
| Cycle (11) | 1 RR | 5 | 3 | 3 | |||
| Forecheck (7) | 1 BT | 2 | 1 | ||||
| Faceoff (7) | 4 | 1 | 1 |
Arguably one of their worst performances of the season. Even though Edmonton had the only three odd-man rushes of the game and went up 2–0, they shouldn’t of even gotten a point to begin with. Right from puck drop the Carolina Hurricanes were all over the Oilers. The Canes held the shot attempts in the first having 67% of them (18–9 ratio). Pretty much every shot they took was a scoring chance or a tip in front of Skinner causing rebounds to leak out. The fact it was 2–0 heading in the third was thanks to Skinner, in what was easily his best game by far.
The Hurricanes also loved taking advantage of the faceoff, where over half of their faceoff shots turned into a scoring chance. In every single aspect of the game, Edmonton looked dead in the water.
A 4–0 win against the Penguins
Oilers shot attempts: 65
Penguins shot attempts: 32 (1 from NZ)
Oilers 5v5 xG: 5.01
Penguins 5v5 xG: 2.32
| Shot Type | Assist Type | Chances | Goals | Odd-Man Rushes | Screens | Rebounds | Tips |
| Rush (16) | 1 RR | 8 | 2 3v2’s | 1 | |||
| Cycle (10) | 2 BT, 1RR | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Forecheck (5) | 4 | 1 | |||||
| Faceoff |
From their worst game of the season to easily their best, Edmonton killed the Pittsburgh Penguins. The shots on goal at one were point were 31–9 in favour of Edmonton and yet it was 0–0 thanks to Joel Blomqvist.
Edmonton had EIGHT odd man rushes this game. EIGHT!!!! (3 one-on-none, one three-on-one, two three-on-twos, and one two-on-one). They torched an old, slow Pittsburgh team. While Pittsburgh did get better, specifically in the third, they still did not look threatening whatsoever. The Oilers gave them no space to set up or start plays, which led to a very few number of scoring chances against. The only time Pittsburgh saw some success was within their cycle, but again, Edmonton did a good job at shutting them down as they only had 10 cycle shot attempts.
Sure, you’d like to see Edmonton clear the net to disallow any screens or tips or rebounds, but these chances weren’t even that HD that it really did not matter. A masterclass game by the orange and blue.
A 3–2 overtime win against the Red Wings
Oilers shot attempts: 43
Red Wings shot attempts: 35 (1 from NZ)
Oilers 5v5 xG: 2.26
Red Wings 5v5 xG: 3.06
| Shot Type | Assist Type | Chances | Goals | Odd-Man Rushes | Screens | Rebounds | Tips |
| Rush (16) | 1 BT, 1RR | 13 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | |
| Cycle (13) | 1 RR, 1BT | 10 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 3 | |
| Forecheck (3) | 2 | 1 | |||||
| Faceoff (2) | 1 |
Edmonton was really bad in the first period. The Detroit Red Wings went on fire and had seven rushes. Yes, almost half of the Red Wings rush chances came in the first. Heck, the Red Wings had 19 shot attempts in the first. That is more than half of the entire game.
Edmonton, like against Carolina, just looked dead and lethargic. Thankfully, they got better. Edmonton out shot-attempted Detroit 35 to 16 for the rest of the game. Thanks to Leon Draisaitl and Evan Bouchard, they made it to OT and won.
But, just how good were the Red Wings? They killed the slow, old Oilers off the rush (as I alluded). Out of their 16 rushes, 13 were scoring chances, including a dangerouns royal road pass and a nice behind the net pass kick from Patrick Kane that led to the J.T. Compher goal. They were all over Cal Pickard setting up screens and rebounds and a whole bunch of tips. Just slopiness all around from Edmonton. So while Edmonton did in theory and stat-wise outplay Detroit in the final forty minutes, Detroit still had a lot of highly danger and quality chances later in the game.
Baby steps ahead
The Oilers are making, slow and inconsistent, but solid progress so far. There are still a ton of issues that need to be sorted out which lies in the penalty kill, power play, inconsistent goaltending, and, again, the lack of focus time from time within the zone. It’s ever more apparent that the Oilers need some more speed in their lineup (Dylan Holloway has six points as of the time of this piece). It’s killing them off the rush and you can argue that it’s led to some dangerous chances off the cycle like seen versus the Stars because of the slow speed.
Thanks for reading. Give me any thoughts and adjustments if you’d like (I am planning on doing the shots period by period next time for games!)
Photo by Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire
