IN DEPTH
Each and every Sunday during the season we dig deeper into Oilers storylines with our long-form features. This week's feature looks back on the year that was.
Winger's hit to defenceman's head in a 1-0 game in the last five seconds of the second period was ill-timed if not ill-conceived
In a season that’s turning into a bad soap opera, Patrick Maroon came clean in the losing team’s bathhouse.
His hit to Los Angeles Kings defenceman Drew Doughty’s head in a 1-0 game in the last five seconds of the middle period Tuesday night was ill-timed if not ill-conceived.
He didn’t mean to strafe Doughty in the head as he got in on the forecheck, but he did and the Kings royally made Maroon and the Oilers pay by scoring three times on the match penalty against what might be the worst penalty-kill in NHL history.
“I’m obviously glad Doughty came back and played,” said the Edmonton Oilers winger after the Kings clobbered them 5-0—the same result by the Winnipeg Jets New Year’s Eve. “But, honestly, I’m a big forward going in to do my job. My elbow didn’t come up, nothing came up, but unfortunately my follow-through hit him in the head.
“I’m not a dirty player. I have so much respect for players in this league, especially him. I play the game hard and I’m just mad they gave me a match and it hurt our PK. I’ll take the onus for that one.”
Doughty, who missed the start of the third because he was undergoing concussion protocol, had glassy eyes and rubbery feet when he left the ice at the end of the second. But, he had a smile on his face as the Kings made the Oilers pay over and over and over again against their PK.
“When stuff like that happens, your team just comes together, scoring three goals on the power play to really shove it up their butts was awesome,” said Doughty.
Doughty didn’t see the Maroon shoulder block, at all.
“I didn’t have the puck, that’s why I was so shocked by it. But I’ve known Maroon for a long time, he’s just trying to finish a hit. I don’t know that he meant to try and hurt me. I forgive him,” said Doughty, who had defence partner Derek Forbort step in to fight Maroon and lose the fight.
“I didn’t have any (concussion) symptoms so I was good to go back out. It takes a little while, a lot of tests. I would have liked to get out there faster but when you get hit in the head it’s pretty important stuff.”
The NHL’s Player Safety Department may also make Maroon pay because he could get be getting a suspension after the hit to Doughty’s head, but that’s later. Right now, the Oilers are reeling.
They’ve lost four in a row after winning four straight to get to .500 before the Christmas break and once again their PK is the gift that keeps on giving. They’ve given up 28 goals in 63 power plays at home, and their success rate is 55.6 percent. The all-time worst is 69.4 percent at home bythe 2008-2009 Toronto Maple Leafs to put the Oilers’ wretched PK at home into perspective.
“It just sucks the life out of us,” said McLellan. “We were OK for two periods. We made a mistake and they scored (Andy Andreoff). The major penalty, it sucked the life out of us. Again, multiple mistakes, things we worked on. Cheating sometimes and leaving early. Not being able to clear a puck when you execute.”
They’re 85 per cent on the road and 55 percent at home, mind boggling.
“We’ve pounded away on a lot of us, especially in the last two weeks. We’ll keep pounding away. I don’t have the answer or we’d have changed it a month ago. Tough question for me to answer,” said the coach.
It’s groundhog day every day for the Oiler PK.
“It’s frustrating to have the same conversation,” said Mark Letestu. “It’s been the story too often. That being said, we didn’t score any goals tonight. It didn’t matter if we let in four or five or 10 on that power play. I’m sick of tipping my hat to goal-tenders.”
This was the second straight shutout at home and fourth at Rogers Place this season—also the first time Connor McDavid has gone three straight games without a point in his NHL career.
“We’ve completely erased the four-game winning streak … I’ve seen it before where a team’s rolling, then a break happens and it almost works against you,” said Milan Lucic. “But that’s just an excuse. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have picked up where we left off because we worked so hard to get back into it.”
E-mail: jmatheson@postmedia.com
On Twitter: @NHLbyMatty
This team showed up for Game 1 against the Calgary Flames and looked like the team most everybody figured they’d be. Then the mental flaws kicked in
In many ways, they’re the Weak-Kneed Wimps II.
When the 2017-18 Edmonton Oilers on the second day of 2018 effectively stuck the fork in themselves and booked the fat lady to sing, it wasn’t in a playoff series against the Los Angeles Kings. It wasn’t an unforgettable moment in hockey history that became known as the Miracle On Manchester.
While it was against the Kings, it was only four games after the Christmas break.
Those young Oilers of Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Grant Fuhr, Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri, Glenn Anderson and Kevin Lowe spent that summer back in 1982 having to face the fact that they were a mentally flawed group that had some large lessons to learn.
They’d somehow come to the conclusion that they were God’s gift to the NHL but found out they were nothing but adolescent, front-running, good-time Charlies.
Is this team honestly that much different?
All off-season, this team had been told that they were about to embrace their future as the next great team in the game. The people who set betting lines had them booked into the Stanley Cup final.
This team showed up for Game 1 against the Calgary Flames and looked like the team most everybody figured they’d be. It was going to be a special season.
Then the mental flaws kicked in.
The Oilers decided they could throw their sticks on the ice and win. They were blind to the fact that despite the only thing they’d ever won was a single playoff series, they were going to face the same kind of treatment as the back-to-back Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins.
With 20-year-old captain Conner McDavid — the winner of the Art Ross, Hart and Ted Lindsay trophies, the 103-points in the standings and 13 playoff games ending in a Game 7 loss in Anaheim — the Edmonton Oilers had become a trophy themselves.
Through November, this team would occasionally come together and win all the little battles and races to the puck and register a particularly impressive victory over a top team, and then follow up with a no-show stinker.
Finally, they made it to December where, playing on the edge of the cliff, they became the Oilers they were supposed to be.
Right through to Christmas, they showed the NHL that they could be the team everybody expected them to be. They won their final four games going into the holiday break. They’d won four straight games, seven of their past 10, and 10 of their previous 15. They’d set a goal of reaching .500 (17-17-2) by the break. They did it. Suddenly, the playoffs looked remarkably reachable. When they read their press clippings (guilt, again), they were told they were back.
But they’re the Weak-Kneed Wimps II.
They didn’t learn a damn thing.
They came back self-satisfied and blissfully ignorant that all their effort in December wasn’t the end game but just a chance to get back in the game.
And so here we are four losses later — with 18 goals against in those games and back-to-back 5-0 losses in must-win games — and this isn’t the summer of 1982.
They’re 17-20-3, and the computerized Sports Club Stats site rates their playoff chances at 1.1 per cent.
In the summer of 1982, the players could go hide. These guys have 42 games left to play, including Thursday’s final game of the four-game home stand prior to a five-game road trip and a six-day break.
And suddenly, it has to hit home.
The rest of this season, because of expectations, is going to feel longer than any of the seasons during the decade of darkness — the record equaling 10 straight seasons out of the playoffs.
And while, to some extent, the Blame Game has already been well under way, now it gets dialled up.
Fire the general manager! Fire the coach!
Those are the last things that should happen here.
This is, first and foremost, on the players.
You fire the GM and fire the coach, you give them the excuse that it wasn’t their fault.
Yes, Peter Chiarelli made a mess of this season as general manager. The guy who made all the right moves the previous two years made all the wrong ones this year.
And, yes, Todd McLellan and staff are currently coaching the worst penalty-kill unit in the entire history of the NHL and can’t tell you what’s wrong with it. Mostly, it’s Chiarelli providing the wrong people to play on it, perhaps. But to go a whole calendar year (other than the playoffs, when it was just fine) is on their head, too. Nobody gets into the playoffs with a penalty-killing unit that pathetic.
But Chiarelli is a good general manager. McLellan is a good coach. Everybody involved has had success before.
Don’t fire anybody. They’re in it together. Let them suffer through the rest of the season, figure everything out, and start all over again next year.
E-mail: tjones@postmedia.com
On Twitter: @byterryjones
The Edmonton Oilers finally broke out of their win-one-lose-one cycle that had dominated much of their 2017-18 season with a nifty new twist: win-four-lose-four. The Oilers did muster one pity point for an overtime loss to Chicago, but it’s a league-wide trend that one loss in four gets such a bonus. Effectively, then, the Oilers have been running in place over the course of their last ten games:
Games 1 – 10: 3-6-1, .350 | 22 GF, 33 GA | 377 SF, 310 SA | .952 PDO
Games 11-20: 4-5-1, .450 | 28 GF, 30 GA | 322 SF, 307 SA | .989 PDO
Games 21-30: 5-5-0, .500 | 36 GF, 35 GA | 335 SF, 299 SA | .990 PDO
Games 31-40: 5-4-1, .550 | 28 GF, 32 GA | 349 SF, 316 SA | .979 PDO
That .550 points percentage — the best of any 10-game segment to date — looks OK-ish until one takes into account that the league as a whole runs at ~.561 due to its cockamamie points system. The good news is that the Oilers overtook one team during the past ten games (Vancouver, 2-7-1); the bad, that they lost ground to 8 of the 12 teams still ahead of them, stayed relatively level with another, and gained marginally on just three other conference rivals. All the while using up 10 of the what had been 52, now 42 games remaining on the slate. Today the Oilers stand 9 points below the playoff cut line, compared to the 7 off the pace they stood after Game 30. Much as it goes against the grain with me, it’s hard to be optimistic, folks.
Of course wins, losses, and uhh, other losses are just one way to parse improvement. By another important measure, goal differential, the Oilers took a step backwards, getting outscored by 4 goals in a segment they won 5 of their first 6 games. But three one-sided shutout defeats to Nashville, Winnipeg, and Los Angeles — all at home — took a toll. Indeed, the Oilers allowed the last eleven consecutive goals of the segment. (Which is exactly why it can be instructive in times like this to step back and look at ten-game trends vs. shorter term outcomes.)
We also see the continuation of two trends that have persisted all season: Edmonton holding a persistent edge in shots on goal, but giving it all and more back with crummy percentages. Despite taking about 53% of the shots through 40 games, the Oilers are scoring under 47% of the goals. That’s what happen when you convert 8.2% of your shots while your opponents cash 10.6% of theirs.
Those percentages are in all situations of course, with the glaring component being the brutal .791 save percentage Edmonton goalies have recorded on the penalty kill (38 goals against on 182 shots), which somehow dropped to .776 in the most recent segment (11 PPGA on 49 shots). That is a team percentage, of course, even as the goalies get “credited” with it. Fact is the Oilers have been allowing way too many ten-bell chances on the kill, the goalies haven’t been performing the requisite miracles, and that shows up on the scoreboard. It’s a subject that’s been thoroughly discussed already so let’s spend no further time on it here, other than to note the impact of that failed unit on the bigger picture, all-game-states numbers presented above.
Overall the Oilers have allowed at least 30 goals in each of the four segments to date, a losing proposition in what is known as a “3-2 league”. Indeed they have allowed 4+ goals in 18 games, posting a 2-15-1 record in those contests. By way of comparison, last season a ten-game segment of 30 Goals Against was the worst of the right.
Individually, the biggest surprise is that someone not named Connor McDavid actually led the Oilers in scoring for a segment, something that had happened just once previously since McDavid’s return from a broken clavicle in the 2015-16 season.
Nineteen players who scored at least one point are shown. As a new feature the team leaders in each category are highlighted, with forwards circled in orange, defenders in blue.
Order notwithstanding, the Big Three down the middle stand 1-2-3 (or if you prefer, 2-1-3) in points despite mostly being deployed on different lines at even strength, where the Oilers scored most of their goals. That they scored a combined 29 points on Edmonton’s 28 goals speaks volumes of how reliant the club is on the trio.
A pleasant surprise to see Jesse Puljujarvi with a nose in front of all three guys to lead the team in shots, suggesting that his co-leading 4 goals were bought and paid for.
On the back end, Matt Benning scored the only goal of the entire group over the ten games, while no defender exceeded 3 points. Absence of back-end scoring has been, and remains, an issue. Andrej Sekera should help address that, but to this early point in his comeback he has struggled at both ends of the sheet.
Parsed by 10-game segment, Talbot has been remarkably consistent, posting save percentages of .904, .902, .901, and .902. Which is different from saying “consistently good”, as we did a season ago when he rolled to a .919 mark. Again I will stress it’s simplistic to put all that on the goalie alone; by eye Talbot has been a little off-form, but so has the “help”.
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Player grades:
We close by reviewing the last ten games through the lens of our own subjective ratings here at the Cult of Hockey. Regular readers will know that we grade on a scale of 1 to 10, the performance of every Edmonton Oilers player in every game the team plays, based on a combination of observation and interpretation of statistical output.
Here are average grades for Games 31-40 along with our customary thumbnail comment summarizing each player’s contribution over that span:
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Cult of Hockey graders (fourth segment):
Bruce McCurdy – 5 games, 3-2-0, average grade 5.4
Kurt Leavins – 3 games, 2-0-1, average grade 5.8
David Staples – 2 games, 0-2-0, average grade 4.4
Segment totals — 10 games, 5-4-1, average grade 5.4
Game-by-game grades, season-to-date (spreadsheet)
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Latest podcast
After Edmonton’s latest 5-0 loss to the Los Angeles Kings, it’s clear this team is out of the playoff race. They can’t kill a penalty. Their top power play unit is gruesome. The coach has run out of answers. It’s all she wrote, so we can all relax now. David Staples and Bruce McCurdy of the Cult of Hockey dig in.
Follow me on Twitter @BruceMcCurdy
