Whip out your Oilers swag from 2006 folks because I reckon there’s a chance we might be taking a trip down memory lane at this upcoming season’s training camp! I’ve been told there’s a chance that Shawn Horcoff and Eric Gryba will be offered a chance to make the 2016/17 Edmonton Oilers if they choose to accept a PTO.
Eric Gryba has, in fact, been offered a PTO by the #Oilers. I'm not sure, however, if he has accepted yet. Likely hoping for a contract.
Now we know that Gryba fared pretty well and was a good chap for the Oilers last year. He spent the majority of last year playing alongside Brandon Davidson and according to Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com, they put up a very respectable CA/60 of 47.84 in 283 minutes. Perhaps if Gryba decides to join the team for one more season, this could be a pairing. Unfortunately, Gryba’s Corsi Against was pretty shite with the other dmen on the squad. But Edmonton is in need of another right-handed defender and Chiarelli loves him some size and physicality, right? I’m only on board of the beard stays though.
As for Horcoff, hearing that he’d like to come back and give it another shot with the Oilers has me mind split like a watermelon on Gallagher’s stage. On one hand, Shawn Horcoff is getting older and his experience, work ethic, and locker room presence would be invaluable. On the other hand, Horcs is going to be 38 years old and how much of an impact can he have on the ice today?
Going back to Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com, the numbers are telling me that this guy cannot play a lick of offense anymore. His WOWYs say that his linemates do a helluva lot better when they are away from him. On the defensive side of the puck, he played quite well with Andrew Cogliano in the 363 minutes of 5×5 even strength time together:
CF/60 – 55.35
CA/60 – 46.92
Horcoff Away from Cogliano:
CF/60 – 45.27 (YIKES!)
CA/60 – 53.09
Cogliano Away from Horcoff:
CF/60 – 57.79 (Holy Snikees!)
CA/60 – 52.5
In 2015/16, Horcoff had the best even strength CA/60 on the ducks apart from Ryan Getzlaf (minimum 600 minutes TOI). Horcoff had 49.67 and Getzy had 48.73.
SHOULD WE KEEP OUR SHIRTS ON?
The thing is we’re going to have to consider the impact on the roster’s make up if Horcoff were to make the team.
So the rub is that anybody who plays with Horcoff is going to see their numbers absolutely nosedive. I don’t even really know how much of an upgrade he is on Letestu. But what he would do is work his ass off, go to the areas that need to be addressed on the ice, provide a defensive presence, and be a reliable face-off man.
The one thing that keeps cropping into my mind though is, could Shawn Horcoff be Derek Roy v2? Is this a guy that could possibly bring something out in Yakupov similar to what Roy did. Horcoff loves the Oilers and being a former captain of the club, he knows about accountability and that’s something that Roy made Yakupov aware of in that short time they played together. Horcoff doesn’t have the skills to be like Derek Roy but maybe that was only a small part of it before…
If the Oilers are intending on keeping Yak for the majority of this season, I’d much rather see Draisaitl with Horcoff, Eberle with Nuge, and Yak with Connor. That’s just me, though. The numbers back-up those combinations and Draisaitl could learn a thing or two playing alongside Horcoff.
What do you think about the Oilers possibly offering Shawn Horcoff and Eric Gryba PTOs to come and try out for the team? Let us know in the comments below!
If you’re in the market for some baby clothes, the BLH Teepublic page has just the thing for you. Head to the site by clicking here, pick the design you like and then scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’ll see a link named, “Kids”. From there you can outfit all of your children in BLH swag! From infants to toddlers! It’s just a matter of changing the sizes to your liking.
If you find something you like and purchase it, thank you so much! The money we make from our tees keeps the website up, helps clothe my own kids, and allows us to make a pilgramage across the Pacific from time to time to visit Canada.
If you don’t see something you like, that’s okay but keep an eye on the page as we’re always thinking up new designs!
Allow me to start off with a preamble here: I love Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. I think he’s one of the best and most underrated two-way centers in the entire league. He’s a great kid. Keeps his head down, does his job, does work around the community, and is just generally a likable guy. I’d be gutted if we lost him.
THAT SAID…
What if he doesn’t have a breakout season here in 2016-17? That’s not to say as if he’s necessarily been “under-performing” in his first five seasons in the league. But you can’t say he hasn’t been a little… soft. Last year he dropped 27 games due to a broken finger, and he’s missed 44 total games in his career thus far. The more worrying thing is that he suffered in 2012-13 from the classic 21st century Oilers ailment known as “Shitty Shoulderitis”, and has already had it worked on a couple of times so far in his young career.
Now, this isn’t to say that he’s a broken man and a lost cause, it’s just a general comment on the physical aspect of his game: it just really isn’t there. Sweet baby Nuge doesn’t take sustained punishment by the NHL goon squad too well. Thankfully, he’s a smart kid, and is gifted with incredibly high hockey IQ, so he doesn’t necessarily need to play the toughest game out there. His intelligence on the ice gets him to where he needs to be and generally keeps him out of where he shouldn’t be. Generally.
I still can’t help but think that, as much as I like the guy, if a certain German stud steps up big time and shows he’s ready to sidle up into the 2C spot behind #97, and maybe a guy like Drake Caggiula ends up proving he can anchor a bottom-6… Well then that’s where things could get interesting.
THE TRADE
Here’s how I see it going down. We’ll have to wait for the 16-17 season to play itself out fully, see who gets moved where, who doesn’t live up to the hype here and there, but I see Edmonton shopping out Nuge to a team who needs a solid, 50-point, two-way center who can drive plays and collapse effectively when those plays don’t always work out. (Who couldn’t use that, right?) But specifically, a team like Minny or Columbus. Call me a cynic, but I just can’t see Pierre-Luc Dubois being the savior for that team. By the end of this season, RNH is still locked into a very reasonable $6M contract for another 4 whole years. That is a tasty deal for a long time, something a team on the receiving end of his skill set can build around.
I see us getting at least a 2nd round pick + top-4 d-man or top-9 forward or prospect out of an RNH trade, but that doesn’t matter so much when we look at…
THE TAKE
Literally the most normal photo I could find of this animal
Brent Burns. I want him. And not just for his ridiculous facial hair or ASG breakaway showmanship. He’s just so goddamn good. And as a 6’5″, 230-pound, right shot offensive defenceman, he’s exactly the type of hockey player that Peter Chiarelli is having exquisitely deviant dreams about right now.
Burns put up 27 goals and 48 assists (75P!!) in a full 82-game campaign last year. His boxcars read like this for his career so far: 797GP-141G-282A-423TP. He’s +3 in RelCorsiFor% averaged for his career. His playmaking is elite with a FirstA/60 rate of 0.53. He’s a giant goon and is a nightmare to play against because he’s so offensively strong while simultaneously being huge and very difficult to break past for opposing offensive players. He’s just so goddamn good.
He’s also coming into free agency at the end of this season. And his contract expiry is such that not only does San Jose not have to resign him before the dreaded expansion draft rolls around, he also doesn’t need to be protected from the clutches/talons/swords of the Las Vegas BlackJackKnightBirds or whatever they’re called this week. To me, this is a perfect storm for Burns to be testing the waters and seeing what a new team might be willing to give him to essentially cap off his fine career.
THE DEAL
Right now, Burnsy makes $5.76/per. A very respectable deal, no doubt. He’ll want more. So if the Oilers just so happen to find themselves, oh, I dunno, ~$6 million dollars richer by the end of next season, what can we reasonably offer Brent Burns that would convince him to pack his bags and head up to E-town?
Well, he’ll be 32 by the time this move is even viable. So I don’t see us wanting to offer him anything over 6 years. He’ll probably want to pull a Weber and be playing (“playing”) into his 40s, but it won’t happen. GMs are way too leery about those deals with defenceman nowadays, considering the fact that Arizona Coyotes legend Chris Pronger is still technically an NHLer. I think Burns will ask for 8, we’ll counter with 5, and ultimately settle on 6 years at something between $7.5-$8M. A huge contract, no doubt. But ultimately a workable one when you consider that we just made $4.5M more dollars by shockingly not resigning Nikita Nikitin, and we’re going to find another $3.25M when Andrew Ference’s contract goes away at the end of this season.
We also have our magical, high-profile player-accumulating tool known as Connor McDavid, and let’s not forget that Burns played for years with Todd McLennan behind him on the bench, and you’ve got to think that if the combo of McD + Chia gets us Looch, McD + MacT could get us Burns…
Anyway, keep in mind here that while San Jose is struggling to say the least with cap space, they are on the verge of losing Thornton and Marleau and their accompanying cumulative $13.4M to unrestricted free agency next season as well. So you never know, maybe they’ll throw the cheque book at Burns and tell him to write in a number he likes. Or, maybe they’re going to clear house and start from scratch. I know I’m sure hoping it’s the latter. Sorry, Nuge.
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I’m just listening to this morning’s episode of Oilers Now! with Bob Stauffer and Mark Spector and they just finished talking about where Nail Yakupov fits on the team, is he a top-6 player on the Oilers, does Jesse Puljujarvi pass him on the depth chart, etc.
From the show:
MS: Where are you with Yakupov? He’s starting the season in Edmonton, they’re not going to trade him at this point. He’s not traded yet, he’s not moving. So you have to reform the player, you gotta reform the asset. BS: Do you have to reform the agent while you’re at it? MS: Well the agent should keep his nose out of it because his agent, as smart a guy as Igor Larionov is, he hasn’t done a darn thing to help Yakupov yet.
I can’t disagree with these sentiments at all. There was a deal at the draft with Philly apparently but it fell through. Not sure why they’d want Yak at this point. The Flyers aren’t known to be the types to take on reclamation projects.
How many times do you think that Larionov has said to Yakupov, “Come on Nayeel… Why can’t you be more like Galchenyuk in Montreal?”
Yak is part of a new generation of players that need to be nurtured and brought along positively in my opinion. I think Bob Stauffer would be the first to admit that the days of breaking down the player and building him back up are over and that’s exactly what the Oilers tried to do under MacTavish and Eakins when they were trying to make Yak a two-way player… F*cking brutal. So now it’s on the Oilers to play to Yak’s tune because it is the organization’s fault for setting him back.
BS: Yakupov has shown no ability to play with others… His thing is he needs to learn how to co-exist with the four other linemates or teammates, you know, two linemates and a defense pair on the ice. So…
MS: Ya, okay but you’re not going to learn that in the summer anyhow. You’re not learning that at Perry Pearns 3-on-3 camp
We’ve been watching Yak since 2012. In his first year we didn’t hear too many complaints about his game, did we?
“Everything has been catching up; it’s a process but his growth as a player is undeniable. Criag MacTavish raved about his development on After Hours last night and particularly highlighted Yakupov’s willingness to put extra work in. That kind of skill married to that kind of work ethic make him a very special player.” – Jonathan Willis (source)
In fact, there was a recent post put out by NHLNumbers introducing a metric called Dangerous Primary Shot Contributions. I talked about it last week here but the gist of it is if a player is impactful within the confines of this metric, then it’s a safe bet said player is quite good.
Connor McDavid ends up being 6th in the NHL in DPSC A1/60 (primary assists leading to dangerous primary shot contributions) AND DPSC/60.
Nail Yakupov fairs pretty well under this new study as a shooter eh? He ranked 15th in DPSC shots/60. Maybe they should keep this kid around and just set up him with a centre and do the whole “Hull and Oates” routine…
Now where I’m going with this is that Yak is a trigger man, we should expect nothing more or less from him. The Oilers should be treating him exactly like Brett Hull because his strengths lie in that style of play. To be honest, Yak is a much better athlete than Hull ever was but the Golden Brett had a knack of slipping the oppositions defense.
Do think that the defences of the other 29 NHL teams are going to be concerned with Nail Yakupov going into 2016/17?
MS: Did you ever think that Nail Yakupov would come to an Oilers camp and not be a top-6 player? And that’s what’s going on this fall, he does not walk in the door as a top-6 player. BS: You got Puljujarvi ahead of him? MS: Oh absolutely! I mean for now. Until he shows he can’t play.
I think this is a tad harsh. Nail Yakupov for all his defects is still an NHL player. Moreso than Jesse Puljujarvi by about 250 games. We don’t know if Puljujarvi is ready to play in the NHL yet. He hasn’t been on the ice since he had surgery on his knee at the end of last season. I’d go as far as to say that even if he is ready, he should go to the AHL.
MS: He’s a guy that because he’s played professional hockey in Finland, and he’s got the size… You know pro hockey in Finland, is it not the equivalent of hockey in the AHL? I’m going to say it is, isn’t it?
To me that doesn’t just mean you walk in and you’re handed an NHL job by any means but I suspect having played in that league, he may earn an NHL job.
Have the Oilers, the media, and the fans not learned anything over the previous 10 years that maybe, just maybe the Oilers’ first rounders don’t need to play for Edmonton right after being drafted? I mean honestly. What these kids need to do is show the Oilers that they are too good for the league they are in before playing a single game in the NHL.
So that means taking similar routes to what the Maple Leafs did with William Nylander and Mitch Marner. Puljujarvi has to show that he’s too good to play in the AHL before getting a shot in the NHL. And who knows, maybe it’d be even better for him to go back to Finland and spend another season playing there THEN come over to Edmonton a year stronger and smarter.
BS: Has Yakupov had someone who really wanted to play with him?
MS: Why would that be?… If guys don’t want to play with you at the NHL there’s a pretty good reason.
BS: The one time for 12 games there was a glimmer there that occured with Connor McDavid.
MS: Sure. So you’re only valuable if you’re playing with possibly the best player in the world in the next couple years… Other than that, like it doesn’t work that way. You don’t just get to play with Connor because you look good with him.
I can understand where Stauffer is coming from in that there probably aren’t many players that would like to play with Yak because he’s so unpredictable and in a league where things are static and creativity is frowned upon, that makes sense. Yakupov has to see that as well, right?
But.
Who ever said it was up to the player as to who they play with? This solely comes down to the coaches and GM (if he’s looking to showcase a player), no? If players play well together, it’ll show in the numbers and the numbers tell us that Connor McDavid played VERY well with Jordan Eberle AND Nail Yakupov his right-wingers. They also tell us that Benoit Pouliot grounded the line defensively.
And don’t tell me that if the Oilers don’t keep Connor Happy he’ll leave. That’s the biggest line of bullshizzle I hear apart from all of the whining that Hall is gone. Stamkos didn’t go back to TO, Tavares has said not to bet on it, Vinnie Lecavalier was adamant about not going back to Montreal… Did Kariya go play in Vancouver, how about Mario in Montreal, Gretz go to the Big Smoke? It’s just not something players do in the NHL.
The other thing is, McDavid’s personality doesn’t ring true with that of previous 1st overall picks that the Oilers have had the opportunity to select. He does what’s best for the team and if that means playing with Yak, he’s fine with that. I mean he tore a strip off of Eberle last season did he not? When’s the last time you saw that?
The Hockey News wrote about how effective the Pouliot-McDavid-Yakupov line was here.
Then there’s the oft-maligned Yakupov who’s had a troubling development curve. With McDavid as his center though, he looks to be back on track. Yakupov is taking almost 10 shots per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 and has steadily improved that number every season. He’s shown potential as an elite trigger man in the past and with his shot rate steadily increasing he could start lighting the lamp very soon, especially with McDavid feeding him pucks.
On the wing, there’s the extremely underrated Pouliot who’s been an analytics darling for the past few years. Pouliot drives puck possession like very few wingers in hockey and is a complete 200 foot player. From 2012 to 2015, Pouliot has a shot attempt percentage of 52.4 which is over three percent better than when he’s on the bench. That’s a first line calibre puck possession rate and it’s because he’s so effective at retrieving pucks and winning battles. He’s also a more gifted scorer than he’s given credit for with a 5-on-5 points per 60 that’s hovered around a first line rate for the past seven seasons. Pouliot is very effective with or without the puck and if you give him some ice-time and he’ll produce.
If this line is as impactful as what Dominik Luszczyszyn is telling us, then wouldn’t it be prudent for the Oilers coaching staff to keep it together as the de facto 2nd line and put Lucic with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Jordan Eberle and use them as the team’s no.1 line? Then toss Maroon on a line with Leon Draisaitl, and Pakarinen or perhaps even Tyler Pitlick makes an appearance there? Could Drake Caggiula line up alongside Leon?
To me that makes a ton more sense to balance the lines as such. If only Iiro the Hero would shoot the puck in the NHL like he did at the AHL level…
I like the way that Matt Henderson summed it up in his latest post on the same topic:
If Nail Yakupov works well with McDavid, the team doesn’t suffer for it, and he can gain value then why not do this to make your asset more valuable. Instead of losing him for nothing in the expansion draft then why not make him worth something before the trade deadline? At this point it’s all about managing this asset. They’ve done a lot of damage keeping him with 4th line centers and suppressing his opportunities to play with talent. That’s done. It can’t be changed. It doesn’t mean they have to throw this player away when better options are available.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!
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I’ve been sitting here at the computer reading over the reports of some players in search of that bottom pairing right-handed shot for the Oilers. I know yesterday I posted an article speaking to the notion that the Oilers do NOT need to go out and mortgage their depth on forward just to get a no.5/6 dman who can contribute on the power play but the search intrigues me nonetheless.
This post will be a short one but these are my findings:
Christian Folin(6’3″ 200lbs+): RHD who has fallen out of favour in Minnesota. A rugged bigger bodied defender, Folin is too good for AHL but not quite skilled enough to contribute at the NHL level. Had a memorable scrap against with Luke Gazdic last season. I don’t think he’s an option at all.
Ryan Murphy (5’11” 185lb): A great player in junior and at the World Junior’s, this RHD can’t get any traction with the Carolina Hurricanes but he was paired up with Noah Hanfin this past season and even though he was partnered with a rookie, Murphy fared quite well (IMO) according to his fancies.I’ve always wondered about Murphy. I thought he was going to be the next Ryan Ellis but check out his 1st NHL goal and you tell me after watching that if you wouldn’t take a flyer on him.
I think there’s a possibility the Oilers inquire about Ryan Murphy’s availability in 2016/17. Might he be the return for certain former 1st overall Russian who plays right-wing on the Oilers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idKy-bqwZEs
David Runblad (6’2″ 187lb): I’m curious if this is a player the Oilers would take a chance on at training camp this upcoming season. I mean, giving him a PTO at this point wouldn’t hurt and with the ever-growing Swedish contingent on the roster, he could find a home within a more comfortable environment.In my opinion, this is a player the Oilers should definitely be inviting to camp.
Why this guy can’t seem to find a home is beyond me. After being drafted by the Blues in 2009, he was shipped to Ottawa for their 1st round pick in 2010 (Vladimir Tarasenko). Then he was part of the Kyle Turris trade. Then he signed in Chicago and put up respectable statistics.
In 2014/15, he played 49 games for the Chicago Blackhawks and posted career numbers (3g 11a 14pts, +17). Now I know those aren’t eye-popping stats but they do show us there’s a player there. He was also sent out on offensive face-offs over 60% of the time that year. His possession numbers aren’t terrible for his career either (Corsi For % is 55.2%). – source
In Switzerland this past season, if you pro-rate his numbers (2g 13a 11gp), he’d have lead his team in scoring and came in third in league scoring. Normally, one wouldn’t read too much into stats out of Europe but Runblad’s production or potential production in a very good league is something that stands out and something that teams would be paying attention to.
With all of that being said, this Oilers team should be focusing on cultivating a new attitude. It shouldn’t be looking to fill specific holes with specific skill sets by dealing out of its new-found depth. But if Peter Chiarelli could find a way to deal out of the Leftorium (as Lowetide likes to call it) and pick up a RHD, I’d be okay with that. I suppose it depends on how desperate Chiarelli is to get that piece.
Make no mistake about it, the trading of Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson and the signing of Milan Lucic will be pivot points for this team.
This week James Wisniewski signed a PTO agreement with the Tampa Bay Lightning and thus ended all chances the Edmonton Oilers had of making the playoffs in 2016/17. Or at least that was the sentiment I felt on Twitter and other online sources.
The Oilers failed to acquire that right-handed defenceman who could QB the power play when they dealt Hall for Adam Larsson. A deal that was compounded when PK Subban and Shea Weber were dealt for each other minutes later.
Chiarelli seemed to have missed the boat on Tyson Barrie as well as the Avs were demanding Nugent-Hopkins in return for the recently signed RFA.
IS THE OILERS POWER PLAY REALLY THAT BAD?
Last season it wasn’t. The Oilers finished the year 18th out of 30 teams with an 18.1% success rate with the man advantage. That was without Connor McDavid, Oscar Klefbom, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Nail Yakupov, and Jordan Eberle for major portions of the year.
It was also sans a power play specialist of the right-handed variety. Schultz, Clendenning, Gryba, and Fayne all had a go at least once in 2015 to no avail. Of course, those aren’t really the droids you want on the PP.
But do the Oilers really need a right-handed power play specialist? I mean how much of the Oilers’ success is going to hinge upon acquiring a no.4-6 dman who has above average skills offensively from the point. I’m going to say not a whole lot.
“It’s their biggest problem on the power play. They don’t shoot it enough and when they do, they don’t have a howitzer from the point. But they too often don’t have sniper fire from the flanks either…” (National Post)
How many times did you throw a beer, a slipper, or a cat at the TV because the Oilers would just dick around on the PP looking for that perfect shot instead of just putting the bloody thing on the net and going for the dirty goals? We’re down to two cats by the way…
DANGEROUS PRIMARY SHOT CONTRIBUTIONS
There’s a recently published post over at NHLNumbers.com that Walter Foddis pointed me in the direction of. It has to do with which types of passing sequences are more likely to lead to goals than others. More specifically in this case, shots that follow passes from behind the net and shots that follow low to high passes.
Now given that those two specific types of passes are found quite frequently on the power play. The findings are quite interesting.
The Royal Road is right down main street aka the slot.
“For each team, players widely considered to be the best offensive player on the team frequently lead the team in DPSC, which is a good sign that DPSC is a reasonable measure of offensive play.”
Connor McDavid ends up being 6th in the NHL in DPSC A1/60 (primary assists leading to dangerous primary shot contributions) AND DPSC/60.
Nail Yakupov fairs pretty well under this new study as a shooter eh? He ranked 15th in DPSC shots/60. Maybe they should keep this kid around and just set up him with a centre and do the whole “Hull and Oates” routine…
The Sedins were the ones to catch in the three categories and that’s no surprise to us Pacific Division fans… The Sedin Cycle am I right? Facking unstoppable in its heyday.
CONNOR MCDAVID
“The PP was 21% with Connor McDavid in the lineup and 14% without him last season. I’ll argue the PP success will be connected to #97. – Jason Gregor (ON)
Hard to argue with that stat line. I do agree with him though. That first power play unit will be stacked because we know that’s how T-Mac likes to roll, and we are hearing that Todd McLellan will be attempting to put up to three right-handers on it. So that means Jordan Eberle for sure and most likely on the left half-wall. I’d venture to say that Jesse Puljujarvi and possibly Adam Larsson would make appearances as well because I’m not sure if Mark Letestu or Zack Kassian would help the main power play unit more than a left-handed shooter.
My Guess as to who might be on the first unit to start the year IF McLellan does get his wish:
Lucic-McDavid-Eberle-Puljujarvi-Larsson
ADAM LARSSON
Sunil Agnihotri has this article up right now about Adam Larsson’s impact versus different levels of competition. Now, Larsson has no real history in the NHL of putting up offense and Agnihotri’s article supports that but his stats outside the NHL tell us a different story. Leading me to believe there’s still some hope in that regard because:
The Oilers ARE NOT the New Jersey Devils or their #9th overall PP (Good Luck Taylor).
The Oilers DO in fact have some of the best young forwards in the league, add to that Jesse Puljujarvi and generational power forward Milan Lucic.
A highly skilled two-way defenseman. Larsson has a big frame, skates very well and has impressive hockey sense. Furthermore, he passes the puck very well and has an edge to his game, although his physical game could use some fine tuning. He likes to initiate contact. Some slight consistency issues. Overall a very strong player with few weaknesses. Does a good job on the power play and is equally valuable in shorthanded situations. – See more at: http://www.eliteprospects.com/player.php?player=10713#sthash.Ubii76VG.dpuf
KLEFBOM, SEKERA, OR DAVIDSON
We could very well see Brandon Davidson and/or Andrej Sekera manning the point on the PP in 2016 because I have a little hunch that Todd McLellan might use Oscar Klefbom and Adam Larsson (OK-AL) as an outright shutdown pairing. I mean that is if the Larsson or Klefbom experiments on the PP don’t work.
The Shinpad Assassin (Sekera) was #10 in the entire NHL for Corsi For per 60 Relative to Teammates on the PP last season for dmen who played at least 100 minutes on the man advantage. #9 was Kevin Shattenkirk, whose Blues had the #6 PP in the league last year, and #11 was John Carlson, whose Capitals had the 5th best PP. So he may not be the ideal candidate for first unit power play but he’s a very acceptable option.
FIVE FORWARD DEATH PUNCH
My lazy memory tells me that the Oilers under Craig MacTavish would use a 5-man power play from time to time or maybe it was Todd Nelson’s OKC Barons. I can’t recall as a few too many Taiwanese Beers has wiped my memory pretty much clean but do the Oilers have the depth to attempt this tactic in 2016? Maybe it was both MacTavish and Nelson…
Draisaitl-McDavid-Eberle-Yakupov-Puljujarvi
The Oil would have their size (Draisaitl), their playmakers (McDavid/Eberle), and their triggermen (Yak/Pulju). What’s not to love?
WHAT ACTUALLY NEEDS TO HAPPEN
The Oilers could have Erik Karlsson, Paul Coffey, or Bobby Orr manning the point on their PP but if they don’t put the rest of the players on the ice in optimal positions to get a shot off, then it’s all for nothing.
That means in a 1-3-1 formation (the set-up I think they’ll go with),
Right-handed shooters like Jordan Eberle (and his shiny new one-timer) and Jesse Puljujarvi’s cannon need to be put on the left wall.
Lefties like McDavid and Yakupov should set up on the right wall.
Lucic, Pouliot, or Maroon should set up shop in the goalies grill.
Nuge or Draisaitl would obviously be the high men in the slots.
Then of course Larsson, Klefbom, Sekera, or Davidson would be dancing along the blue.
Thus giving us this:
Jordan Oesterle is a name not often mentioned but he was one of the better puck moving defenders for the Oilers last year. He’s smart, fast, and can rush the puck very well. One of the few prospect signings Craig MacTavish got right.
Tell me what you think the Oilers should do with their power play in the comments below. Should they sign James Wisniewski or Nikita.. Er, I mean Dennis Wideman? Play five forwards? Or just carry on with what they have?
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