I’m not sure about you, but for myself, I’ve been watching a lot of old school Oilers games lately and wondering how this team is going to do when hockey returns. For whatever reason (maybe the decade-plus of losing has something to do with it), I’m feeling a tad pessimistic as it pertains to the rest of the 2019/20 year. I don’t have a great feeling and with that said, here are three reasons why I think the Oilers could be doomed when hockey resumes this year.
Goaltending
Mikko Koskinen and Mike Smith were rolling when the stoppage occurred weren’t they? Combining for a 2.85 GAA and a .910 save percentage (source), they were really keeping the Oilers in games they had no reason being in during the recent weeks prior to the NHL shutting things down.
One thing with goalies is that they get into flows and ruts I find and these two were in a helluva flow, an almost surreal one if you will but once play resumes, they’ll have to find that mojo again and for me, that’s easier said than done. In reality, given their ages (31 and 37 respectively), it’s probably going to take them more than a few weeks to get back into the shape they were in before the COVID-19 sent everyone home and if it’s a sprint to the end of the year or straight into the NHL playoffs, they won’t have that time. They’ll need to be on their game from the get-go.
The Penalty Kill
I believe the Oilers were 1st in the league on the powerplay and 2nd on the penalty kill. Absolutely fantastic! Of all the reasons I feel a bit jaded with regards to the boys continuing their hot play once the game gets going again, this one I’m least worried about but there’s still a modicum of concern there and it sort of falls under the same umbrella as the goaltending. Momentum.
It took Edmonton’s most important penalty killers the better part of 20 games to really find their way in Dave Tippett’s system and once they did, they basically rode that wave until a little over a week ago. Do you think that to a lesser extent there’d be some similar pains once the league re-started?
The Oilers Top-Six
Edmonton houses quite possibly the NHL’s best top-six I feel and they running on all cylinders. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was well on his way to the best season of his career and Kailer Yamamoto was scoring at a PPG pace. Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl were destroying the league scoring-wise as well. Even if 97’s wingers were rotating, McJesus stirs that drink and makes his line insanely dangerous.
So what happens when the opposition has the time to sit down and pick apart their games? Something they didn’t have when the year was halted because the schedule was so compressed.
Now, I don’t think you can stop McDavid and Draisaitl completely. You can slow them down for sure. As for the others (Nuge, Killer, random 1st line wingers), they can be stopped and if that’s the case, what happens to Edmonton’s offense should that be the scenario?
What it all comes down to is momentum, really, and at this moment in time, I’ve got a hard time believing that the Oilers could keep theirs up after a multi-month break. I don’t have any statistical evidence to back that up mind you, it’s just one half of the coin.
Although, at 5×5, Edmonton was having some real troubles down the stretch and if you’re looking for one legitimate reason to be down about their near future, that very well might be it.
Of course, the other half of the coin tells us that there’s no stopping the Oilers and all of the things that I mentioned above could very well WIN them the Stanley Cup. Ken Holland built this team for a playoff run and there’s depth at nearly every position. So even if there was some drop in play/production, in theory, there’d be someone there to pick up the slack, right?
See, hockey is chaos. It thrives in the random and unknowingness. Ken Holland’s men could shit the bed with the man advantage or disadvantage but their 5×5 could step up, right? The goaltending could go right into the gutter but their bottom-six scoring could go supernova given its new-found depth.
In the end, the chaos is why I love the game. I love not knowing what in Sam’s high Hell is going to happen when everything comes back. Maybe the Oilers are the worst team in the NHL, but then again, maybe their the best team…
