The Edmonton Oilers around Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl were thrilled last season and marched somewhat surprisingly into the second round of playoffs. Only a few moante later, however, the daily routine in Alberta is over and the Oilers will miss the playoffs. There are many reasons for this.
The Edmonton Oilers and their General Manager Peter Chiarelli certainly had different ideas before the season. Instead of looking for more puzzle pieces for the trade deadline for a possible deep playoff run, the Alberta franchise acted as a seller and sold two rotation players with accumulating contracts for a few low picks in Mark Letestu and Patrick Maroon.
“It’s not a good time,” admitted General Manager Peter Chiarelli,”I don’t like to sell, it feels like we’re weakening our team, but it doesn’t affect the outcome of the season, even if the GM won’t like to hear that.
In principle, the season has been running for almost two months. After a great season in 2016/17, when the Oilers failed unhappily in Game 7 of the second playoff round due to the Anaheim Ducks, the Canadians returned to where they were between 2006 and 2016, their darkest phase in the history of franchising – in the mud of the Western Conference.
With 16 games still to be played, the gap to the last wildcard spot in the West amounts to a whopping 17 points, a deficit which, according to the point system of the NHL, cannot be made up for in principle. The current 60 points can only undercut four teams in the entire league. It’s an utter nonsense when you know that Connor McDavid is one of the best players in the National Hockey League.
At the 21-year-old center, it is certainly not the case that Edmonton dug such a deep hole in November and December. The youngster took part in all 66 games and already scored 80 points, which is 100 points from the previous year’s Art Ross Trophy for the best scorer of the league.
However, there are too many gaps around the franchise player. The Oilers lacked powerful fingers, which became apparent at the beginning of the season when coach Todd McLellan tried to side with McDavid’s slender rookie Kailer Yamamoto. The experiment collapsed.
So Leon Draisaitl has to spend most of his time next to McDavid on the right wing and not, as he did in the playoffs when he anchored his own row as a center. 30 percent of his playing time is spent in Draisaitl’s five to five alongside his captain, similarly McLellan did it during his time in San Jose, when he spent his best two centers with Joe Thornton and Joe Pavelski.
The management, however, paid Draisaitl in the summer like a center: the German will receive 68 million dollars over 8 years, but his services are still too meagre.
Since this season, the German has earned a handsome 8.5 million dollars per year, but has been able to show this too seldom on the ice. A McDavid draisaitl combo can of course also be an advantage if the row is extremely dominant, but it does not. For Draisaitl, 60 points are recorded in 62 games, his plus-minus-value is an average of 5.
Another side effect is the toothless further rows, which can only generate a few offsets. Especially experienced Milan Lucic (only 32 points) disappointed on the whole line, the same goes for Ryan Storme (31 points), who came to Alberta in summer in exchange with Jordan Eberle.
That Eberle, by the way, blossoms at the New York Islanders alongside top-rookie Mathew Barzal, the fans of the Isles already call their second row the Chiarelli-Line, because Barzal was drawn in 2015 with a pick of the Oilers.
It seems to be a general trend that players perform better after leaving Rogers Place. Another example of this is Taylor Hall, who with the New Jersey Devils is a bit surprisingly clear on the play-off course and currently scores at least one point in 25 consecutive games.
The Winger was replaced in 2016 by defender Adam Larsson, who failed to repeat a good season this year. The same is true for Oscar Klefblom, who is supposedly the best defender of the Oilers. The Swede, however, struggled almost the entire season with minor injuries and could never reach the level of the last postseason. His attacking qualities are unmistakable, but in his own zone the 23-year-old often appears too hesitant and does not always have the best positional play. The fact that Kris Russell and the long injured Andrej Sekara are also far from their top form made the whole mission even more difficult.
The biggest problems of the Oilers are the Special Teams. Todd McLellan’s team is 31st in both Penalty Kill and Powerplay, the last of the NHL. Despite a magician like McDavid on the ice, the Oilers were only able to score 24 goals in 206 overcount situations (14.3 percent), of which the captain had his hands on 15.
It becomes even more curious when looking at the under-number situations. In foreign halls, the Oilers are the best team in the Penalty Kill with 87 per cent, but in Rogers Place the Canadians have already allowed 39 goals in 97 powerplays (59.8 per cent kill).
To put this into context, since the NHL expanded to 21 teams in 1979, only four teams have had a worse penalty kill rate than 70 percent. Edmonton is just loosely beating the 1985/86 season’s negative record (66.5 percent) of the Detroit Red Wings.
“Powerplay and Penalty Kill are important parts of the game, not just statistically speaking,”McLellan explained in the first month of the season, when the disaster was already hinting at it,”It can give you self-confidence if you can celebrate a small sense of achievement there. Last year we were very good at it, but not this year. That’s not really understandable.”
But the problem was not solved. The same applies to the goalie situation, where number one Cam Talbot also collapsed after a strong year. Of all Goalies with at least 23 goals, Talbot is in 40th place out of 49 qualified Goalies with a save-percentage of 90.4 percent.
Maybe the wear and tear of the 30-year-old is now making itself felt, last season he managed to keep his box, top score and seven games more than Freddie Anderson from the Toronto Maple Leafs in 73 games. The reason for this is quite simple: there was no confidence at all in Backup Laurent Broissoit, who once again loosely undercut Talbot’s performance with an 88.6 percent catch quota. Meanwhile, they reacted and the experienced Al Montoya was taken, but he doesn’t pull out any trees (89.4 percent).
So there are enough problem areas in the Roster in Edmonton, but how are they approached? President Bob Nicholson chose the words “shocked” and “disappointing”when asked to give an interim summary of the season.”We’ll take time to look at everything in the organization, but we have a plan and we’ll put it into practice.”
Will Chiarelli still implement this plan? The GM seems to be numbered (similar to the coach), especially the Hall-Trade, many people in the organisation continue to resent him, even though Nicholson did not address this.”We couldn’t get the expectations under control after last year. We have a lot of good things I don’t want to ruin.”
At the moment, the mood in Alberta is something like doom and gloom, a well-known sentiment from the last ten years. Nevertheless, there can be hope: McDavid is still under contract until 2026 – and as long as the new superstar in Oil Country chases after the puck, the Oilers will remain relevant. Better results should then be achieved.