We are officially at the quarter season mark and what a start to an NHL season campaign this has been. Martin Necas is leading the NHL points total, Alex Ovechkin looked to be on pace to break Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goal record (pre-injury) and the Edmonton Oilers are sitting outside of the playoff spot.
How should you be feeling about the latter of these and what does this mean for the Oilers? Let’s take a deeper dive below.
NHL standings at American Thanksgiving last year
At this time last year, Edmonton Oilers were 5–12–1, sitting third last in the Western Conference and 10 points outside the last wild card spot. End result when the season was said and done? Second place in the Pacific Division, Western Conference Champions, and Stanley Cup Runners Up. Not a bad turn around for a team that started 2–9–1.
When it comes to the Western Conference teams in the playoff picture at the American Thanksgiving last season, they were as follows:
- Central Division: Dallas Stars, Colorado Avalanche, Winnipeg Jets
- Pacific Division: Vegas Golden Knights, Vancouver Canucks, Los Angeles Kings
- Wild card: St. Louis Blues, Seattle Kraken
Of the above teams, only the Blues and Kraken fell out of the playoff picture with Oilers and Nashville Predators replacing them.
With respect to the Eastern Conference, the standings at American Thanksgiving were as follows:
- Atlantic Division: Boston Bruins, Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning
- Metropolitan Division: NY Rangers, Washington Capitals, Carolina Hurricanes
- Wild card: Toronto Maple Leafs, Detroit Red Wings
At the end of the regular season, all but one of the above teams in the Eastern Conference made the playoffs with Detroit Red Wings being replaced by the New York Islanders.
What does this mean? If you were in a playoff position come Thanksgiving, you had a darn good shot of making it into the playoffs (81.3% chance to be precise). This seems to roughly match the percentage quoted in a review article by Sportsnet last year where they found a 76.7% success rate of teams making it into the playoffs if they were in the playoff spot on American Thanksgiving dating back to 2005–06 season.
However, while this may seem concerning, there are a few things to note about last year and this year’s standings at the quarter season mark.
- Last year, 14 points separated the final wild card team and the bottom team in the West. This year, and with more games played, that gap has shrunk to only seven points.
- Oilers are currently sitting only one point out of the second wild card spot. Last year, that difference was 10 points.
While certainly not perfect, playoff standings at Thanksgiving seem to be a decent prognostic tool to bolster predictions around who will make the playoffs at the end of the season. However as we saw last year, anything can happen and with more parity in the Western Conference, don’t be surprised if the playoff standings become a game of musical chairs.
Oilers’ on-ice performance this season
With an 11–9–2 record, the Oilers are surely treading above the .500 win percentage. However a lot more can be expected from most of their roster.
Once again, the team is led by Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid with 30 and 28 points, respectively. Next closest forward is Mattias Janmark who currently has 10 points, with two of those points coming from the most recent match-up against the New York Rangers. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has the next most points for forwards at nine points. The Oilers are clearly lacking production from their top-six wingers and the secondary scoring from the bottom-six forward group is not making up the difference.
Oilers’ defensive group play has not been up to par either. The bottom four group seems to be in Kris Knoblauch’s constant rotation and the defensive core as a whole is yet to establish their identity. They have been making noticeable improvements throughout the season in pushing their opponents to the outside perimeter and forcing them to take poor quality shots. However, their lack of physicality and ability to defend against speed seem to be ongoing concerns and something that the team will need to address moving forward.
Oilers’ goaltending duo of Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard gave up 69 goals so far this season, tied for fifth most in the Western Conference. Oilers’ defence can certainly clean up some of their plays in front of the netminders. However, heading into his third full season as an Oilers’ starter, a lot is expected of Skinner and rightfully so. He has proven himself with tremendous performances down the stretch last season and he knows that the 3.23 GAA and 0.882 save percentage is seemly not what we have come to expect of him.
Finally, the Oilers’ special teams have been one of the biggest surprises early into the season. And not in a good way. Starting the season, the power play and penalty kill were near or at the bottom of the league standings, with a sub-60% penalty kill percentage early on. While their penalty kill (70.9%) and power play (15.8%) are third-worst and seventh-worst, respectively, the team has started to clean up their act on both of these fronts and these percentages are starting to slowly see some improvement.
Pacific Division current standings
This year’s Pacific Division is looking like it is going to be a tight race to the finish. As it currently stands, the difference between the third-place Kings and the last-place San Jose Sharks is only eight points.
As big of a surprise that the Oilers’ slow start has been, an even bigger surprise of the division has to be the stellar play of the Calgary Flames. After their hot start to the season, the Flames’ seemed to have slowed down with a few consecutive losses before returning to the win column and maintaining their overall form. As it stands, the Flames are second in the Pacific Division with 28 points. Time will tell if they can maintain their winning ways but they sure look for real as it stands.
In addition to the Flames, fierce competitors in Golden Knights, Canucks and Kings round out the top four in the division standings at this time. Golden Knights are proven winners while Canucks are looking to build on their surprising campaign last year and go beyond the second round. Kings continue to be a hard-working and gritty team that won’t give up any easy opportunities to their opponents.
As we can see, division games will be absolutely crucial to the Oilers’ chances of both making the playoffs and putting themselves in best possible position to go on a deep playoff run. Stay tuned.
What does this all mean?
There is no need to push the panic button yet. Oilers’ slower than expected start may be a surprise given the way last season ended but they are already doing relatively better as compared to this time last year. This is despite the rotating carousel that is their defensive pairings as well as the injury bug/slow start in their projected top-six forward group (ie. Zach Hyman, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Viktor Arvidsson, and Jeff Skinner).
While it may seem like a tall task right now, if the forward group other than McDavid and Draisaitl finds their scoring touch and the defensive group continues to make improvements and finds consistency in their defensive play (especially against the speed), Oilers will almost certainly force their way into the playoffs. And then some.
Photo by Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire
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