Without getting too deep into the weeds of history, the Edmonton Oilers were flat-out not good enough in their own zone in Games 1 and 2 of the current first-round playoff series versus the Los Angeles Kings. Both games the Kings scored six times on goaltender Stuart Skinner, and in Game 1, a solid defensive play here or there would have seen the Oilers either pull out the win, or go to overtime with a chance to win that game.
Now, to give credit where credit is due, shaky Game 3 and a rough goal against in Game 4 aside, Calvin Pickard has come in and performed above expectations to help the Oilers secure their current three games to two series lead. But, as is often the case, goaltending can also be a bellwether of where defensive play is at, and the Oilers defence has certainly settled in over the past eight periods (including OT of Game 4) of hockey. Game 5 was by far their best performance, as they hardly let the Kings even have a scoring chance at 5v5.
How vast is the defence’s improvement? Let’s take a look.
The plays being made are much improved
In Games 1 and 2, a lot of people were clamouring for an extra save or two from Skinner, and sure, there are a couple of big saves he didn’t make, mixed in with an iffy goal given up here and there. But just from Game 1 alone, here are two goals allowed by the Oilers where the defence most definitely hung him out to dry: Josh Brown letting the Kings’ Andrei Kuzmenko walk behind Skinner uncontested for a backdoor tap-in, and Evan Bouchard serving up a pizza with all the toppings to Phil “it’s not delivery, it’s” Danault.
Contrast those, and the 12 goals allowed in the first two games combined, with the stats since the third period of Game 4, in that the Oilers have outshot the Kings 79–34, outscored them 6–1, and have made plays like one in the third period last night with Bouchard clearing a puck away from the crease to help Pickard keep the score in Edmonton’s favour.
The difference in stat cards
Credit here goes to HockeyStatCards on X, which offers an at-a-glance of a player’s impact on a certain game. For this section, let’s use Game 2 instead of Game 1, so that the entire defence corps is unchanged (no swap of Brown for John Klingberg).
This game was easily the worst all series for both Ty Emberson and Bouchard, and Bouchard didn’t have anything going offensively to make up for his poor defence on that night.
Darnell Nurse also had a pretty rough outing, and the bars suggest this was the one game all series where Brett Kulak didn’t bring his “A” game defensively.
Jake Walman was okay, but the penalty kill unit as a whole struggled mightily. Klingberg brought his individual offence but wasn’t helped out much by the team around him (and he also made mistakes defensively in his first game back from injury).
Fast-forward to the card from Game 5, and the difference is night-and-day. Whereas defencemen occupied the bottom two spaces on the Game 2 stat card, defencemen (namely Walman and Klingberg) occupy the top two spots on this card. Kulak was his usual rockstar self at shutting everything down against the Kings, and as mentioned above, even Bouchard’s defensive game was the best it has been by far all series.
Nurse and Emberson are lower down, but in their cases, they sacrificed offence in the name of winning a 2–1 game that ended 3–1 thanks to an empty-netter. That ability to win 2–1 games is part of what helped the Oilers get to the Stanley Cup Final last year, and they’ll need plenty more of these games as we get deeper into the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
A quick fancy-stats update
In a previous article this observer wrote, the advanced stats from Game 1 did not look kindly on a majority of the defencemen dressed in that game. Especially blighted was Brown, who played less than five minutes and was removed for the next game in favour of Klingberg, who came off LTIR.
These are the highlighted stats after Game 1, for a reminder. It’s of little curiosity why Brown essentially didn’t see the ice after his early Game 1 mistake, but also startling were the figures for Bouchard, and Nurse. And while Emberson and Walman weren’t horrible, you’d usually like your defencemen to have an on-ice xGA/60 below three.
Heading into Game 6, the notable category is the on-ice expected goals against per 60, which can show how well a defenceman is doing at cancelling our scoring chances. The key here is that Nurse and Bouchard have drastically lowered their on-ice xGA/60 numbers— Bouchard by a full 1.7 goals, and Nurse by an even greater 3.63 goals.
Emberson and Walman have also seen modest improvement in those categories, and while Kulak’s on-ice xGA per 60 has increased by a quarter of a goal, he is still the only Oiler defenceman to post a number below two for that column. Klingberg has also come in and performed far steadier than Josh Brown.
*stats via MoneyPuck.com
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