We’re two games back from the Oilers’ bye week/All-Star break and Edmonton hasn’t managed to win a game yet. They’ve gone into both matches with a lead in the 3rd period only to lose it and then give up the 2pts in OT. Hey, getting one point is better than none, especially now, but this team has to find a way to stay calm and collected in the third and hold onto these leads.
Truth be told, I’m starting to 2nd guess Hitchcock right now. I was absolutely jacked during his first month, winning AND losing, but now he’s starting to repeat himself during post-gamers saying things like “that was the best 3rd period we’ve played in a long time”. I swear he says something like this every post-game.
It’s not just the things he’s saying, I’m not enamored with how he’s deploying the players either. Who sends Chiasson out in OT simply because he’s right-handed and the faceoff was on the right-side? Nuge was the right guy to have out but I’m still waiting for Jesse Puljujarvi to get his shot in OT. The guy would boss all that open ice. #FreePulju
It’s my belief that the Oilers are looking at a GM/Head Coach combination of Kris Knoblauch (assistant coach in Philadelphia) and Kelly McCrimmon (assistant GM in Vegas) going into 2019-20. I’d be fine with that and if Hitchcock wants to stay on as a hockey ops advisor, I think that would be fantastic too.
My good friend Ryan from edmontonoildrops.ca has another post up regarding Darnell Nurse that I want to show you! Check out a snippet below and then click the link at the bottom to see the full post!
How Did Nurse Fare as a 1D?
Oscar Klefbom is set to return from injury against the Flyers on Saturday. When Klefbom went down, that created an opportunity for Darnell Nurse to take over as the team’s #1 defenceman. I wrote an article about how we were about to find out what we have in Darnell Nurse at that time. His level of success during Klefbom’s injury is a strong indicator of just how high his ceiling is because he is nearing that magical 300 NHL games played number, which is usually when you know what you have in an NHL defenceman.
We can’t say that coach Hitchcock held Nurse’s minutes back at all. The strategy was not to distribute the minutes more evenly amongst the entire D group. He averaged 26:50 in ice time per night during that stretch. He played in all situations. In addition to leading the defence group in even strength ice time (as he did when Klefbom was healthy), he took Klefbom’s spot at the point on the top powerplay unit, and he continued to play on the penalty kill as well.
How did he do? Click here to head to Ryan’s website to find out the metrics in which Nurse excelled and performed poorly in and if Darnell Nurse has the potential to be a no.1 defender in the NHL at some point in the future. The answer might shock you.
