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Oilersnation
A Look Into Potential Left-Defenceman Targets for the Oilers
Jakob Chychrun
- He’s an excellent top-four defenceman. Although Chychrun went on an unsustainable shooting% heater last year, similar to Darnell Nurse, Chychrun’s underlying numbers have been exceptional. He can drive and suppress scoring chances at a high rate.
Shayne Gostisbehere
- Gostisbehere used to be a prominent two-way defenceman at 5v5 in Philadelphia from 2015-2018. However, at this stage of his career, he seems like a player that excels primarily at special teams, which is really not the type of player that Edmonton needs.
Ben Chiarot
- Per Corey Szjadner (@ShutdownLine on Twitter, he manually tracks individual microstats), Chiarot’s zone denial rates rank in the 20-30th percentiles among defencemen. To make matters even worse, he takes a lot of penalties.
Vladislav Gavrikov
- Gavrikov is a fairly average offensive defenceman, but he is excellent defensively at suppressing both goals and chances against. Per Corey Szjadner, his zone denial rates rank in the 70-80th percentiles among defencemen. In addition, his rate of playing time against difficuly competition is roughly at the level of the average 2nd pair defenceman.
Jake McCabe
- Jake McCabe is a superb defensive defenceman… Playing at a high rate against elite competition on poor teams like Buffalo and Chicago, and posting these defensive results is an impressive feat. He’s under contract at $4M for four more years, which is a pretty decent deal.
BLH’s Thoughts: Looking at Edmonton’s group of defensemen that are on hand right now and attempting to project those dmen into the playoffs, I’m thinking you want defenders that suppress zone entries and scoring chances against and by Lewis’ descriptions above, that means Jake McCabe and Vladislav Gavrikov.
No disrespect to Chychrun, but why in the world is a talent like that even available? He’s on a very good contract for Arizona and he’s not even 25 yet! The Coyotes would be off their rocker to move him… Unless! There’s something going on behind the scenes that isn’t publicly known yet, like an injury or a trade request.
My feeling is that McCabe isn’t going anywhere. He’s young and signed for quite a while and the Hawks are going to need him along with Connor Murphy and Seth Jones to lead their defense into the future.
I know that Calvin De Haan isn’t as good, but he sounds more like the type Ken Holland would bring in plus the Oilers have had their eyes on Marc-Andre Fleury for a couple of years now.
Gavrikov… I gotta be honest. I don’t know a lot about the guy. He was in the game against the Oilers the other day and maintained a 56% SF% and wasn’t on the ice for an even strength goal in 16:30 of 5v5 TOI. So considering the Blue Jackets lost that game 5-2, that’s really decent. Aged 26 years, two more years at $2.8M, and he’s 6’3″ 213lbs. There’s a lot to like there I think. Why would Columbus let him go though?…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aexGoawGFvk
Lowetide.ca
- The Draisaitl line has been bleeding goals recently, Leon is 2-8 goals at five-on-five in the last four games. On the other hand, Draisaitl is one of the greatest players in the league and Yamamoto (0-4 in those games) was 62-38 in five-on-five on ice goals over the last two seasons.
BLH’s Thoughts: If I’m reading that 5v5 goals stat right, it sounds like Yamo’s riding Leon’s coattails there a bit. Actually that stat is for the 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons and this year his 5v5 on ice goals differential is 14-20 and below is what the stat looks like if you modify it to the “relative” form which would separate Killer from his teammates to let us know how much he, as an individual, impacted the game in that certain metric.
- 2019/20 GF/GA per 60: 1.96/-0.86 (The “heater” year)
- 2020/21 GF/GA per 60: 0.01/-0.94 (Offensive slump begins)
- 2021/22 GF/GA per 60: -0.42/0.11 (Production left a Dear John letter on the table)
If one or both of RNH or Yamamoto could find his offense again, the line would be deadly, but the way things are trending, I wonder if Warren Foegele might get a longer look in the top-six (weird how he gets going when he’s playing with a proper NHL center, eh?) and as a result Nuge gets moved to 3C…
If RNH stays on Leon’s wing, the Drai line could use a little KY to get it going, if you know what I mean…
The Daily Goal Horn
- “Arizona GM Bill Armstrong refused to comment when asked, but it now sounds like the Coyotes are gauging the market on Jakob Chychrun,” Elliotte Friedman recently reported. I’ve heard the ask is massive, but that doesn’t mean opponents are running away. He’s signed for three more years at a very reasonable $4.6 million AAV and is a terrific player. This is one to watch.”
- “A few teams have expressed interest (in Jonathan Klingberg) and contacted the Dallas Stars,” Sportsnet’s Jeff Marek said in late November. “The one team we know that has called are the Carolina Hurricanes… a team that’s always looking for a quality hockey player.”
- “Edmonton is considering three areas,” Friedman said on his latest podcast. “Goalie, and Mike Smith’s health could determine that. Left defense, and third line center are what he’s looking at.”
