Edmonton Oilers: Puljujarvi is Outplaying Yamamoto and Here’s How Plus Making Coco

Hey! Guess what day it is? If you said it’s Oilers gameday then you’re only 50% right. Tonight is the premiere of Making Coco at Rogers Place! If I was home, I’d be spending the day downtown just waiting to get into the rink to watch this most anticipated documentary.

CANT WAIT for the #MakingCoco premiere this Wed at @RogersPlace

With less than a couple hundred tickets left, this will be the largest audience my team & I have ever presented to & probably one of the largest documentary audiences in 🇨🇦 history.

TKTS: https://t.co/GdPfYJpPjI pic.twitter.com/X90VOO2Gs0

— Adam Scorgie (@AdamScoreG) October 16, 2018

If you’re not watching the game, then you should pick up a ticket and head to Roger’s place to watch this beauty. It’s from the company that brought you Ice Guardians. The documentary about fighting in the NHL.

And if you can’t make it, I definitely recommend picking up a copy of Grant Fuhr: The Story of a Hockey Legend! I’m reading it right now and it’s so enlightening to read how he came up as an adopted child and the trials and tribulations of playing and becoming the first black superstar in the NHL. Get that book here!

We did up a couple of shirt designs in celebration of the premiere! If you’re so inclined, please pick one up for yourself or a loved one! They’re on sale for 30% off for the next 72 hours!

Click on the images below or head to this link right here to go to the Beer League Heroes TeePublic shop directly and see all of the available designs!

Before I get going on this post I would like to preface it by saying the most obvious thing that must be said when talking about a team or players and we’re not even 10 games into the season.

We’re three games into the season! Don’t get too excited and don’t get too down. There’s lots of time for things to average out and today I’m simply throwing out some information I found interesting. I hope you find it interesting too.

Stats courtesy of naturalstattrick.com

PULJUJARVI > YAMAMOTO… So Far

I’m not an analytics expert by any stretch of the imagination but if we look at the traditional stats found on NHL.com we’ll find that Jesse Puljujarvi and Kailer Yamamoto are pretty even save for a couple of categories and that could be due to linemates, opposition and/or deployment, right?

Here’s what I mean.

So as you can see, things are pretty much even which probably lends things going Yamamoto’s way actually given his opposition should be a bit more difficult as opposed to Jesse’s.

So let’s look at which dmen from each of Edmonton’s opponents so far

Yamamoto has seen the most of in this small time frame 5×5.

• Kevin Miller (BOS) – 8:31 TOI
• Andy Greene (NJ) – 7:46 TOI
• Matt Grzelyck (BOS) – 7:13 TOI
• Damon Severson (NJ) – 7:01 TOI
• Kevin Shattenkirk (NYR) – 4:34 TOI
• Marc Staal (NYR) – 4:19 TOI

Now, Puljujarvi.

• Will Butcher (NJ) – 7:03 TOI
• John Moore (BOS) – 6:45 TOI
• Brandon Carlo (BOS) – 6:37 TOI
• Ben Lovejoy (NJ) – 5:34 TOI
• Frederik Claesson (NYR) – 4:09 TOI
• Kevin Shattenkirk (NYR) – 3:58 TOI

I think we can give that battle to Yamamoto.

Now, if we dig a bit deeper and look at both Puljujarvi’s and Yamamoto’s advanced stats, we’ll see a different story I believe.

The rankings are derived from all the right wings in the NHL who’ve played 30 minutes or more like Jesse and there were 71 of those.

I picked these stats because I think they reflect a forward’s contribution more so than including the “for” and “against” stats. You probably noticed I didn’t throw up any statistics related to goals and that’s because the only player that is making an impact on the scoresheet this year so far is Connor McDavid. Hopefully that changes.

So as you can see, Jesse Puljujarvi is having a much larger impact on the Oilers shots than Kailer Yamamoto to date.

In fact, this season, Jesse Puljujarvi has improved nearly every player’s Corsi For when he plays with them except Caggiula and Strome oddly enough. Check it out here.

The same cannot be said for Yamamoto. Yet.

For a team that might be considered to be struggling offense-wise, wouldn’t it be prudent for the coach to put a player in the top-6 that can drive shots?

I suspect that Jesse is in McLellan’s doghouse because he’s not your typical hockey player on the ice. His game is not built for black and white, up and down hockey. It’s fluent and free-flowing.

Sean Patrick Ryan (@theoilknight) had this to say which I think is very relavent.

This chart supports the video I put out last week. Tough to maintain possession and get quality shots off from high danger scoring areas when all you do is dump the puck in. Plus it pretty much takes away any creativity enter the zone. The team is drowning in the “The Flood”.

Nothing like early season small sample sizes. pic.twitter.com/N9Wo3Q2y9s

— Corey Sznajder (@ShutdownLine) October 16, 2018

It all makes sense now. Look at how many times Yamo does what coach wants & dump puck in. Now look at how many times Jesse dumps it in as opposed to carrying it in. Player not running coaches system. Coach not happy. No Top 6 time for u. We’re trying to run a flawed system here!

I have gotten word that McLellan has instructed his team that Connor is to be the only one carrying the puck through the neutral zone and to me that seems odd. If you’ve got more than one player who excels at rushing with the puck, wouldn’t you want to promote that ability? Or else wouldn’t you be utilizing fear-based coaching? Afraid that a player may make a mistake, so you strip him of one of his natural skills to save face…

What do you think? From what I’ve present today, does that give more or less credence to how Jesse is being handled by the Oilers?

RISHAUG ON PULJUJARVI

Not sure if you heard Ryan Rishaug talking about Puljujarvi on Jason Gregor’s show last night but he said some pretty interesting things.

They put Puljujarvi in that position so that he wouldn’t end up on one of the two scoring lines where if the start wasn’t great or people weren’t starting to circle guys that should be producing more and with him on the 3rd line you kinda go okay, they just need to be solid and play a good game and that sort of things. So they’ve got him in this position for a reason and you know that was maybe one of those games where, I thought he was good too.

As if they were concerned with Pulju’s well being. If you haven’t noticed the MSM has got the knives out for Leon Draisaitl even though he’s a point-per-game player at the moment. I highly doubt they’d be grinding on Jesse Puljujarvi if he started out goalless in his first three games on Leon’s line. How do I know? Not a word about Yamamoto’s drought to start the year.

He’s got some stuff in his game where he still has to iron out. There are some frustrating traits in his game if you’re playing with that guy. There’s a lot of East to West stuff that’s in his game. It happened the one time really obviously where he threw the linemate offside and ended up going back the other way.

Jesse doesn’t play with his linemates, they play with Jesse. It’s funny that Rishaug brings up that giveaway but fails to bring up a scenario in the 3rd period that is near exactly the same as that giveaway but in the 3rd Jesse chipped and chased. I wonder if his linemates found that frustrating? Or maybe the coaching staff was pissed off that Jesse did the right thing and he’s chipping away at their reasons to keep him bolted to the bench.

There’s some stuff in Puljujarvi’s game that he’s working through but he’s still young so they have him in this position so that the pressure will be off. Little positive steps are what’s going to be needed.

I think McLellan is going to be patient with JP and I think, you know, I’m not going to tell fans how to feel. I think fans should be patient with McLellan as he tries to be patient with Puljujarvi. I see Todd trying to do the right thing with this player and people are just pulling their hair out over it.

Has Todd ever considered stepping out of the box he lives in? He puts trust in the players to sort out their intermission talks, why can’t he put the same trust in them to do the right thing on the ice?

It just goes to show that maybe putting the team in the hands of a coach who has only had to coach veteran hall-of-famers (past, present, and future) wasn’t bright if the team had no intentions of giving him a veteran squad to work with.

That line I think the combination of Strome and Puljujarvi is together for a reason. If he lets it breath a little bit it’ll be good for Puljujarvi but he’s definitely got some stuff in his game that he’s gotta iron out before I think he’d consider elevating him. 

I think this is a bullshit narrative that the team is pushing to try and trick the fanbase into thinking that Puljujarvi on the 3rd line is the best course of action for his development. You can check his fancies at natural stat trick and it will tell you if Pulju was a drawback when he played with Connor and Leon.

One of these fine days the coach, be it McLellan or someone else, might have the sack up and tell Leon or Connor or both that this young man can help them on the ice and if they can’t accept him as a linemate then maybe they should spend some time on the bench thinking about what it means to be a good teammate and leader.