The Edmonton Oilers are 9–2–2 through 13 games and sitting at the top of the West, so it would be easy to look at this team right now and feel good about where things are headed. But dig into the numbers a little and a slightly alarming story might turn up, one that Mike Babcock has likely been piecing together for a few weeks now. This team has three elite players and a whole lot of hope after that.
It has been a widely held view around the league for a while now that this team has nothing meaningful past Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, and Evan Bouchard once you get through the top of the lineup.
Previous coaching staffs heard the same criticism and largely could not answer it. From what the first 13 games of this season have shown, Babcock is now getting his own crash course in exactly that.
Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl are the ones keeping Edmonton afloat
Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, and Evan Bouchard have combined for 82 of Edmonton’s 143 points this season. That is 57% of everything the Oilers have done offensively, and those three players have also scored 27 of the team’s 55 goals.
Nearly half the goals on the team belong to three guys. Pull them off the scoresheet and what is left is really ugly.
McDavid has 36 points in 13 games. Eight goals and 28 assists, a plus-17, and a pace that puts him somewhere north of 225 points over a full season. McDavid is touching the puck on almost every meaningful play this team makes and those 28 assists mean he is setting up goals almost as fast as some teams score them.
Draisaitl is doing just as remarkable. 12 goals in 13 games from a centre is the kind of production that would lead most teams in the league, and he is doing it while winning 58 percent of his face-offs and playing the kind of all-around game Babcock tends to value.
Together, he and McDavid have basically been keeping the lights on while everything around them has been quite predictably unpredictable.
Evan Bouchard is making the Oilers’ scoring imbalance more obvious
Bouchard has 22 points in 13 games, a plus-19, and two game-winning goals. He is playing at a pace that would make him one of the best offensive defencemen in the history of the position if he keeps it up, and Babcock has already talked publicly about the next steps in his development.
The early read is that his defensive game is improving alongside the offence, which is what makes him so hard to deal with for opposing teams.
But again, the fact that the third-leading scorer on this team is a defenceman says something about where the forward group is right now.
The Oilers’ secondary scoring dries up after Podkolzin
Vasily Podkolzin has been a legitimate surprise. 13 points and eight goals make him the fourth scorer on the team. Beyond Podkolzin though, the conversation gets a lot shorter a lot quicker.
Kasperi Kapanen and Mathieu Joseph are tied at six points each, and after that most of the roster is sitting at one or two points or nothing at all.
Alex Formenton, Owen Michaels, and Mattias Ekholm all have two goals each. After that you have a cluster of players with a single goal: Trent Frederic, Zach Hyman, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Colton Dach, Shakir Mukhamadullin, Ryan Shea and Isaac Howard all sitting at one.
Then Connor Murphy, Jake Walman, Ty Emberson, Josh Samanski, Jason Dickinson, Max Jones, and Filip Hallander have not scored at all through their respective games.
Former NHL coach warns Oilers cannot keep relying on their stars
This is the part that should concern Babcock, and former NHL video Coach Steve Peters put it plainly on Daily Face-off LIVE this week.
“You cannot continue to count on those two,” Peters said. “I mean, they can, they’ve done it year after year after year, but you see how they start to get tired in games. Man, it’s hard to put that much pressure on those guys.”
Peters also pointed to who Edmonton actually needs back in the lineup to change the equation.
“You need secondary scoring. Hyman came back into the lineup, then he’s out again. Jason Dickinson is a guy they need in the lineup, Matthew Savoie is a guy they need in the lineup. They need these depth guys to be healthy, but they’re not coming back anytime soon.”
Tristan Jarry faces more pressure with Levi sidelined
Oilers 3.23 team goals-against average and an .885 save percentage are about average, and neither Devon Levi nor Tristan Jarry has been the reason the Oilers have won most games though Levi had a promising start to the season.
They have both done their jobs and stayed out of the way of losses, which is something, but this team is scoring its way to wins far more than it is goaltending its way there.
With Levi now on injured reserve and Jarry as the clear starter, that dynamic is probably going to continue for the next little while.
Oilers need more than their three stars to sustain this start
The wins are real and the record is very impressive given everything this team has been dealing with. But Mike Babcock is still figuring out what he actually has beyond three extraordinary players.
The answer so far is that the rest of the group needs to step up their game like they did in the 4–0 win against Calgary to take some pressure off the leaders.
Otherwise, an 84-game season can turn out to be a very long one if the load and production is not better distributed in the coming weeks.
Photo by Melissa Tamez/Icon Sportswire
I’m not an Oilers fan, but it’s amazing how a team that is 10-2-2, posting back to back 4-0 shutouts, still has articles like this written about them. I agree they are top heavy…but come on…i think there have been a lot of injuries too.
Nigel scored two yesterday and has 7 points in 5 games.
Horrible article. How many depth players have scored in the last several games? You are quoting a no name video coach 😂. Maybe you should write for the Flames. Nuge has 7 points in 5 games back, a lot if injuries are forcing more playing time on McDavid and Draisaitl. what do you mean our third highest scorer being a defensemen is an issue? Do you even know hockey?