We’re set! The NHL has announced that hockey is coming back and with that, we can finally start looking at the Edmonton Oilers and start asking some serious questions.
- Will this be the year Darnell Nurse finally takes the next step in his development and claim his rightful place as a first-pair defenceman?
For me, this player is a little bit frustrating. I love that early in his career he let it be known that he wasn’t somebody to screw with. He beat up a few hockey players pretty bad and now nobody will touch him. Great, when he’s on the ice, his teammates have some extra leash.
However, I’ve got two issues, one being that Nurse doesn’t take advantage of this amazing power that he wields. Knowing that nobody will challenge him because there’s a risk of getting embarrassed and bringing their team down, why doesn’t he channel his inner Chris Pronger or Derian Hatcher and just wreck the other team’s stars? He needs to be more assertive physically…
That’s how you want the rest of the league talking about you if you’re M.O. is being a tough physical d-man…
Two, his offensive game has developed nicely, but his defensive game… Not sure that’s getting better.
For example, let’s use a screenshot from Natural Stat Trick and take a look at how his pts/60 Relative at 5×5 has progressed every season,
Very nice! That is the kind of progression that will net a player a hefty raise come contract time. Now let’s take a gander at his GF% Relative at 5×5
(Sorry about the image size)
His possession metrics are all over the place and I’m not a fan of seeing my no.1 dman’s GA/60 being higher than his GF/60. I mean that GF% has been in STEEP decline for three years now…
Now, I’m not the most analytically educated, so maybe my opinion on this player using these numbers is flawed, but what I’m reading doesn’t tell me he’s irreplaceable. I’m seeing a player that gets to pad his offensive numbers playing with the best player in the world but isn’t holding up at the other end of the ice…
So am I confident that Darnell Nurse will take the next step? I’m not, but that’s not going to matter because he must. He is this club’s 2nd last line of defense and he’s going to be seeing the likes of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, Elias Pettersson, Mark Scheifele, Brendan Gallagher, Matthew Tkachuk, etc. nine or ten times this year… If Nurse shows even a little bit of let up, it might be game over for Edmonton because their goaltending needs him to keep those shots to the outside.
- With the season only going 56 games, how will that affect the Oilers’ goaltending?
Speaking of goaltending, my feeling is that Mikko Koskinen and Mike Smith were in off-season form during the play-ins against Chicago. The wear and tear of the season didn’t affect them but also, they weren’t in that zone that playing three or four nights a week gets a player into.
That begs the question, with training camp being as short as it will be this year and with all that time off, how will Edmonton’s goalies start the year?
A shit start to this season might leave the Oilers looking at another lottery pick…
- Will Edmonton’s third line be the best scoring third line in the NHL?
Assuming that we’re looking at Tyler Ennis, Kyle Turris, and Jesse Puljujarvi, I have a hard time finding a line with more potential to score as this one could.
What we’ll be looking for is if Turris can have a bounce-back year. This is something he’s experienced each time he’s moved on to a new club. He’s usually good for 35-40pts/year, so I don’t think that 30 in a truncated season is out of the question. With Ennis, we’re hoping that leg injury he sustained colliding with Kirby Dach in the play-ins doesn’t slow him down as it would be nice to see him produce around 0.5pts/game.
As for Puljujarvi, he needs to be the trigger man on this line. Ennis and Turris will be able to find him, but he’s got to show that he can find the soft ice, or else he’ll find himself stuck in the slot playing the Johan Franzen role that McLellan and Hitchcock had him playing before.
What might work to his advantage is getting shots on cold goalies since… We’ll have to see where his confidence level is early on, but if he just starts firing pucks on net at every opportunity early in the year when teams and goalies are finding their mojo, he very well could find some luck and we may have a 20-goal scorer. That’s a lot of luck though and I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather see Yessa be a physical force contributing to all aspects of the on-ice game.
- In the event that the team gets off to a slow start, will that prompt GM Ken Holland to make a big trade?
This is something that I think about a lot. During the off-season, if you didn’t know that Ken Holland was going after some big fish to upgrade the defence and goaltending, you must’ve been living under a rock.
The two biggest question marks on the team got addressed to a degree, but probably not as much as a lot of people inside and outside of the organization would’ve preferred.
Mark my words, if the Oilers had brought in Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Jacob Markstrom (or even Darcy Kuemper), they’d be considered Stanley Cup contenders today, not just a borderline playoff team. And yes, they would be paying the price down the road when those players started to decline, but what about the now?
Think about it, Edmonton’s success is really hinging on Tyson Barrie regaining form, Dominik Kahun being able to re-ignite that flame with Leon Draisaitl, the Oilers’ defence not shitting the bed, and for the netminding just to show up and do a slightly better than average job.
If Koskinen shows he’s not up to the task and the Oilers start the season on an extended losing streak, I don’t think that Ken Holland can sit on his hands. He’s got some really nice prospects bubbling under right now and a contract that is about to go on LTIR, so the option to pull the trigger on a 3-for-1 trade to upgrade the playing personnel is very much on the table.
- Who is the biggest sleeper on the team and conversely, who might be the most overrated?
The biggest sleeper on this team is defenceman Theodor Lennstrom. I watched some video of him this past weekend and he’s got massive potential I feel. So much that I wonder if Edmonton would shop Kris Russell at one point, especially if the plan is to bring in Slater Koekkoek or Ben Hutton…
If you give Koekkoek or Hutton a two-year deal, Russell’s spot on the expansion draft list is filled…
What are some of the questions you have before training camp starts? Let us know in the comments below!
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