The Edmonton Oilers have had a disappointing start to this season, a 7–6–4 record places them at 18th in the league. For a team that has been to the Stanley Cup Final two years in a row now, that just isn’t good enough. The good news is that the team that beat them in the Finals both years, the Florida Panthers, is doing even worse so far this season.
I know if you’re reading this article you have seen the Oilers play and have your own view of what’s going on with the team, but here are my three most telling stats that define the Oilers start to the season.
Corsi is the Oilers most troubling indicator
By far, this is the stat that is most indicative of the Oilers trouble this year. Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, Corsi is any shot attempt whatsoever during the game whether it hits the net or not. Corsi For % (CF%) is calculated as Corsi For divided by (Corsi For + Corsi Against). So if a team’s CF% is over 50, it means they have more shot attempts than their opponent.
Since shots are obviously a better measure of how much quality offence is directed at the net, Corsi is often viewed as an estimate of puck possession, of how much a team is controlling the game. It’s also a measure of how willing a team is to shoot the puck though, and speaks to the strategy of a team.
Carolina has been the poster boy for Corsi for the last five years now, and a good argument for it’s importance as they have been very successful over the last five years. Florida, Los Angeles, and Colorado are also commonly high on the list.
A high CF% has been relatively well correlated with total points in recent years, although that hasn’t quite held true so far this year. Struggling teams like Calgary, Washington, Florida, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Nashville are all in the top ten in CF%.
Whether or not it’s important, and I personally believe it is, in the past five years the Oilers have always been in the top ten. They are often in the top five in CF%, and this year they are 16th, with a CF% of 50.45%. Last year it was at 54.08% (fourth in the league) and the year before it was 55.17% (third). While that four or five percent doesn’t seem like a big change, it represents a significant difference in the actual number of chances for and against the Oilers.
If you don’t believe in Corsi, then looking at any other offensive stat should serve to convince you of the same. shooting %, GF, and shots are all down significantly from last year. The offence just isn’t what it has been in recent years and that is the one thing the Oilers could always depend on. Where goaltending and defence were question marks, offence has always been dominant.
As an interesting aside, The Oilers have had 22 unique offensive lines play 10 minutes or more, which is the most in the NHL. Toronto is the only other team who has played more than 20 different lines and the league average is just under 15. It’s my opinion that Coach Kris Knoblauch needs to settle on some lines and let them get some chemistry.
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Oilers have the fourth worse GAAX
This stat is goals against above expected. GAAX is calculated as goals against – Expected goals against (xGA). xGA is a complicated stat calculated by assigning a “probability of being a goal” to every shot. An un-screened shot from the point is assigned a number close to zero whereas an open net tap-in is assigned a number much closer to one.
At the end of the game you can sum the xGA to see how many goals “should” have been scored on you. If less actual goals were scored on you than xGA, your goalie played better than expected, if GA is higher than xGA your goalie should have had some more saves.
The Oilers GAAX for this season is 4.71, fourth worst in the league. The league average is -2.57, meaning that the majority of goalies save more than expected, some of them way more. While the xGA is, to a certain degree, subjective and should not be taken as an actual measure of how many goals the Oilers backstops should have saved, the overall ranking of fourth worst and distance from average of 7.28 is worrying.
The stat goals saved above expected (GSAX) is essentially measuring the same thing except now the higher number is better. Stuart Skinner is 42nd in the league with 0.7 and Calvin Pickard is 58th in the league with -1.8.
I am personally of the opinion that the Oilers team defence is letting too many good chances through the cracks, especially poor coverage in front of the net, turnovers, and bad backchecking. Although that doesn’t change the fact that the Oilers have the third highest GA, but only the 19th highest shots against and 16th highest high danger chances against.
The team defence absolutely needs to be better, but these stats say that the goalies need to be better.
PDO showing the Oilers bad luck
If you aren’t familiar with PDO, it is a team’s 5v5 shooting % + 5v5 save percentage. The NHL average PDO is always 100 because the sum of all GF has to equal the total GA and the same is true for shots for and against.
It is often called “puck luck” for a number of reasons. Mostly because as the season goes on, every team is essentially guaranteed to move closer to 100. So a team that has a PDO of 105 earlier in the season is probably playing unsustainably good hockey and a team with a PDO of 95 is probably playing the worst hockey they will all season.
That is the reason I have included this stat on the list. The Oilers currently have the lowest PDO in the league at 95.2. The Oilers season so far, like so many times in the past, has been defined by under-performance. The Oilers are essentially guaranteed to start scoring more, get better goaltending, or both.
That isn’t actually mathematically assured though so the Oilers do need to start scoring more and playing better defence. However, this stat is meant to remind everyone that this has happened in the past, there is still a lot of season left, more than enough time to turn things around.
stats from NHL.com, moneypuck.com and naturalstatrick.com
Photo by Derek Cain/Icon Sportswire
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