Monthly Archives: January 2017

Edmonton Oilers, G Money, NHL

How Big Are the Oilers Really?

We know that Pete Chiarelli has prioritized adding size over the last year.  Those moves have been universally lauded where the package included skill (e.g. Pat Maroon), but less universally loved when it involved a size vs speed+skill tradeoff (Lucic for Hall for example).

No question, though, that the Oilers are now a bigger and tougher team than they have been in the past.

Seems that a couple of questions are now floating in the heads of some Oilers fans: a. do we need to get even bigger? b. will we?

Maybe, maybe not.

There does seem to be a tendency for teams to copycat the latest Stanley Cup champions “formula”.  So now the focus turns to Pittsburgh’s speed and skill rather than size. It always works that way – follow the “leader”!

But how big are the Oilers really?

Before most Oilers games, I tweet out what I call my “Heavy Hockey Update”, which scrapes the NHL roster pages for the Oilers and the team they are playing. I take all players listed on the active roster for each team, and calculate the average height and weight of the forwards and defensemen separately.

Although I do this mostly for fun, splitting the data this way I think is more useful than just giving a roster height and weight, which not only conflates the two player positions, but also rolls in goalies (who, let’s be honest, are not relevant to the question of how big a team really is!).

(The ideal way to do this would be to weight the players based on TOI, but I won’t have that improvement ready for a little while yet as I’m preoccupied with other projects).

All Thirty

What I did for this article is tweak my program to scrape the rosters of all 30 teams at once. You can take a look at the raw data table at the end of this article.  What can we glean from it? Let’s dig in!

First off, you can see that height is mostly not a big deal – the shortest team forwards are TBL at ~5’11”, and the biggest are COL and WSH at 6’2″. That’s a range of about 4%. For defensemen, that range compresses, running 6’1″ to 6’3″.

The bigger discrepancy is in weight, where the range is ~11% for forwards and defense.

The roster size of forwards ranges from 190 lbs (CHI) to 210 lbs (COL).

For defense, that range runs from 194 lbs (MIN) to 217 lbs (CBJ).

In the table, I’ve highlighted the Oilers, as well as the top and bottom teams in the two categories.

Based on these parameters, the Oilers now rank:

  • 14th overall in the forward size ranks
  • 21st overall in the defense size ranks

Again, this is based on the NHL.com active roster listings as of January 4th, 2017.

There is no question the Oilers are bigger – in times past, the Oilers were bottom 5 in the league in both categories. But still far from ‘big’!

Is it enough?

Well, if you look at the table, you’ll note that there really doesn’t appear to be much of a relationship between size and results.  CHI and MIN and PIT are all well down there, and they’re pretty good!  Mind you, so are CBJ and LAK up at the top of the table.

But BUF and COL are both big and terrible.

Also funny to see how average Chiarelli’s old team is size-wise.

Personally, I’d rather add speed and skill over more size. The Oilers need a right handed shooter, and someone on defense who has a PP cannon and/or can make headman passes like Ryan Whitney or Pronger or Visnovsky used to do.

If you are going to add size, though, it’s the defensemen that are smallish, not the forwards.

Data

Team Avg F Height Avg F Weight F Weight Rank Avg D Height Avg D Weight D Weight Rank
ANA 73 202.4 12 74 205.7 18
ARI 73 201.2 15 74 203 23
BOS 72 196 20 75 208 13
BUF 73 206 3 75 213.4 3
CAR 73 195.6 23 74 202.6 24
CBJ 73 202.9 10 74 217 1
CGY 73 195.2 25 74 202.3 26
CHI 72 189.8 30 73 197.4 29
COL 74 209.9 1 74 211.4 4
DAL 73 203.4 7 74 209.4 7
DET 73 196.7 19 74 207 15
EDM 73 202.3 14 74 205.1 21
FLA 72 194.6 26 75 206.6 17
LAK 74 208.9 2 75 213.6 2
MIN 73 203.2 8 73 194.1 30
MTL 72 191.9 29 74 208.3 11
NJD 73 195.9 21 74 205.6 19
NSH 73 200.8 17 73 201.9 27
NYI 72 203.1 9 73 205.6 19
NYR 73 202.6 11 74 209.1 9
OTT 73 195.7 22 73 204.7 22
PHI 72 195.6 23 72 198.9 28
PIT 72 193.9 27 73 202.4 25
SJS 72 201.1 16 74 208.6 10
STL 72 205.2 5 74 210.8 5
TBL 71 192.2 28 75 208.3 11
TOR 73 202.4 12 73 206.9 16
VAN 73 197.8 18 74 210.4 6
WPG 74 203.5 6 74 209.4 7
WSH 74 205.8 4 73 207.1 14
Armchair GM, Beer League Hero, Edmonton Oilers, NHL, Rob Cooke, Trades

Good Wood: A Defenseman for the Oilers

The Oilers are going to play a red-hot Columbus Blue Jackets tonight and I think they might get the two points. But that’s not the only thing on my mind today…

NHL draft and prospect guru Corey Pronman recently posted an interesting tweet that got my headbone churning. It was a list of the top 20-year-old point scorers in the AHL and atop said list was a defenseman out of the Arizona organization surnamed “Wood”.

https://twitter.com/coreypronman/status/815748202943184897

I’ll be honest, I had no bloody clue who this kid was but the reason I decided to dig into him is because he was a d-man piling up the points as a rookie in the AHL. The most immediate question that came to mind was, is he right-handed?… YES! The next question was, did he have size. YES! And that sealed the deal, an article was to be posted detailing this 20-year old rearguard.

I mean honestly, if you’re looking at the Oilers depth chart, what position are they in dire need of upgrading? Right-shot players I’d say and one that plays defense is the cherry on top.

At the moment the right-side defense’s depth chart looks something like this (please let me know if I’ve left anybody out):

  • Adam Larsson (NHL)
  • Matt Benning (NHL)
  • Eric Gryba (NHL)
  • Mark Fayne (AHL)
  • Ethan Bear (WHL)
  • Filip Berglund (SHL)
  • John Marino (NCAA)
  • Vincent Desharnais (NCAA)

So they way I see it, Fayne and Gryba will most likely be gone sooner than later. Ethan Bear will need a season or two in the AHL, Filip Berglund probably won’t come over until he’s at least 21; and John Marino and Vincent Desharnais are probably long shots at playing a game in the NHL.

On top of that, the Oilers AHL club has so many left-handed dmen that they moved Joey  Laleggia to forward and are using Mark Fayne and another fella named Bryce Aneloski (I don’t know who he is either). They could use some help down there.

So that’s why the Oilers should be looking into the availability of Kyle Wood. He’s 3rd in AHL rookie scoring, 4th in points for a defenseman, and sits in 18th place overall for scoring in the entire league. Not too shabby, if you ask me.

Sir McDavid takes on Kyle Wood back in their OHL days.

Kyle Wood

Born: May 4th, 1995
Birthplace, Waterloo, ON, Canada
Age:20
Position: Defense
Shoots: Right
Height: 6’5″
Weight: 209lbs
Drafted: 3rd round #84 by Colorado in 2014

Kyle Wood was originally a pick by the Colorado Avalanche but the Arizona Coyotes acquired him as part of the package for Mikkel Boedker and he is rapidly making a name for himself in Arizona.

Wood’s stats are pretty damned good for a player who wasn’t known to bring much offense to the table coming out of junior. Here are some quotes regarding Mr.Wood that will help shed some light on the player he was in junior and is now as a pro in Tuscon.

“At 6’5, 230lbs, he has the size to cause scouts to salivate. And he actually moves decently well for a big man. He’s also a physical player who is already very tough to play against in the corners. As time goes on, he’ll become quite a defensive force. Offensively, he’s actually surprisingly effective. He can lead the rush and he’s been quarterbacking the Battalion 2nd powerplay unit.” – Brock Otten (source)

“He’s obviously a big kid but one of the things our scouts liked about him is that he was willing to move pucks under pressure. He’s calm and makes a good first pass; he doesn’t seem to get rattled easily.” Jim Playfair, ARI Asst. Coach (source)

“Towering over other players, Wood can be mistaken for a pure defensive defenseman but that is not the case. Wood has an underrated offensive game and was the second power play unit’s quarterback for his junior team. He uses his size well and to his advantage. Teammates love having him on the back end and opposing players hate going up against him.” – Hockey’s Future (source)

“Wood is a big defenseman who has shown solid two-way potential.  He has great size that he uses to his advantage, and an above average hockey IQ.  The book on him is a little lacking because he missed the first half of the season due to injury, but Wood will most likely be a solid defender for North Bay in the future with a very solid chance to make it at the NHL level.” – Shane O’Donnell (source)

The Shot

“He’s got a heavy shot, and learned to shoot it when he’s supposed to,” Samuelsson added. “But he’s got the hardest one-time I’ve seen, so it’s been nice to see him score a lot. It’s hard and it’s accurate, so it’s good to have on the power play for sure.” – Henrik Samuelsson

“When you see him loading up, it’s time to get out of the way and let him shoot,” Perlini joked. “I just try to give him a good lane because I’m in front of the net because it’s obviously coming in fast, so if I get a little screen on the goalie, he can wire it.” – Brendan Perlini

“He shoots the puck like Shea Weber,” continued Lamb. “That’s who he shoots it like. He’s a big, right-hand D that is skating.”

Where a lot of Wood’s points have come from is the Roadrunners’ deadly top power play unit, which has been the most productive power play unit in the entire league by far, cashing in on 31.3% (21-of-67) of their man-advantages. – Jason Bartel

(source)

Say What?! A shot like Shea Weber?… Well that sort of does it for me. Wood has the size, the skating, the hockey IQ, and he puts up some pretty rad numbers on the PP. Now, we know that the Oilers are looking for both size AND a shot for their PP. Wouldn’t this kid fit the bill?

Wouldn’t this kid fit the bill? I should ask though, is he more Shea Weber or Cody Franson?

The alternative to Kyle Wood would be to pick up Michael Stone from the Coyotes. The soon-to-be UFA right-handed defenseman is sure to be a playoff pickup for some NHL team but I know that the Oilers have been barking up this tree all season. This scenario is much more likely unless the Edmonton could offer the Coyotes something they couldn’t refuse for Kyle Wood. The old Griffin Reinhart + Benny Pouliot offer isn’t likely to tempt Mr.Chayka.

What would you offer the Coyotes for Kyle Wood or Michael Stone? Let us know in the comments below!

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G Money, NHL

Oilers and Playoffs – Guidelines for Scoreboard Watching

Oilers and – gasp! – playoffs?!?

Yes, indeed, here we are in January and the Oilers don’t just have a shot at the playoffs, but should be favoured to end up with a spot in the post-season dance!

That means we as Oilers fans get to do something that should be quite familiar – scoreboard watching.

The difference is, this time we’ll be watching the scoreboard for the playoffs and not the lottery. Which means now we want to win, and we want other teams to lose! Refreshing!

So I thought I would lay out my particular set of rules for scoreboard watching as it sits today: the things we want to happen with other teams in order to get the Oilers into the playoffs.

Of course, ideally we want the Oilers to win every game and be in complete control of their own destiny … that hopefully is a given, yes? But it’s not that realistic, so hoping for other teams to suffer strategic losses is par for the course.

So, here they are, my actual rules for scoreboard watching:

  1. Since we don’t compete with the East for playoff spots, any time there is an Eastern matchup with any other Western team, we want the Eastern team to win.  Always.  So gird your loins and start cheering for BUF, TOR, PHI, etc!
  2. At this point, the teams with a realistic chance of overtaking the Oilers are CGY, DAL, and WPG, with VAN having an outside chance and COL and ARI already pretty much out. So we want them, especially the first four, to lose. Always. (With CGY and VAN that should go without saying).  Especially important for the Oilers to win these games, which is why the SO loss to Vancouver on New Years Eve was … annoying.
  3. In any matchup between those five teams that are chasing the Oilers, we don’t really care much who wins, but we want the win to be in regulation, with no Bettman point awarded!
  4. With any other West-West matchup, we generally want the teams the Oilers are unlikely to be ahead of (SJS, LAK, ANA, MIN, CHI, STL) to win out over the teams the Oilers are likely to be with or ahead of (NSH plus the teams mentioned in point #2).  NSH losing decreases the likelihood that one of the teams that are behind can actually displace the Oilers out of a playoff spot. Again, obviously a regulation win is preferred.

So to summarize:

  • Oilers uber alles
  • East always over West (except Oilers)
  • CGY, DAL, WPG, VAN, COL, ARI to lose. Especially to the Oilers. If playing each other, no Bettman point.
  • High West vs Low West, we want higher to win, now including NSH among the “Low”. Again, preferably with no Bettman point.

Did I miss any other rule you think is critical? Please post in the comments section.

Otherwise, let’s git to watchin’ that scoreboard!

Armchair GM, Beer League Hero, Edmonton Oilers, NHL

Burmistrov?

https://twitter.com/FriedgeHNIC/status/815604485414383616

Alexander Burmistrov is a 25 year old centre/right wing making $1.55M (source) per year until the end of this current NHL season to which he will then be a restricted free agent. Is this a player that the Edmonton Oilers could find use for?

Right off the bat, I’d say no. The Oilers could very well bring up Anton Lander, Anton Slepyshev or Jujhar Khaira and save some skrilla but I have to speculate if the Oilers would have interest due to the Ondrej Pavalec rumors earlier this week.

If the Oilers could offload any combination of Benoit Pouliot, Jonas Gustavsson, and Mark Fayne and bring in Pavalec and Burmistrov, would that be so bad?

The Russian’s Numbers

Simply put, an ECHL player might put up better numbers than Burmistrov. He has 1 point 5×5 this year, an assist, two points in total.

Possession stat-wise… This is how the 6’1″ 180lb Ruskie is doing:

So as you can see, his PDO is at a ludicrously low level but so is his Corsi… I’d be curious to know how much of this is due to his most common linemates (Chris Thorburn/Brandon Tanev) and his deployment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTZSmL5d1Qw

At the Draft

After lighting it up for the Barrie Colts in 2009/10, the Atlanta Thrashers picked Burmistrov 8th overall in the 2010 draft. The report on him from Elite Prospects says:

A very skilled center with a very good understanding of the game. Excellent puck control, soft hands and quick skating. Has a very good shot. Weaknesses are physical game and defensive skills.

The Thrashers immediately tossed Burmistrov into the lineup and thus, the downward spiral began.

Alexander Burmistrov has never been able to put up anything better than 13 goals or 28 points in any given season that he’s played in the NHL. Even after he bolted to the KHL in 2012 for two years, he didn’t put up gaudy numbers for AK Bars Kazan (108gp 64pts) either. Those are the kind of stats that couldn’t keep Nail Yakupov in town, so I imagine they wouldn’t be enough to move Peter Chiarelli’s interest meter either.

The Availability

Back in November, Elliotte Friedman reported that Burmistrov was up for trade.

“There was a note sent around this week that Alexander Burmistrov is available,” said Friedman on Saturday’s Headlines segment. “I don’t think there’s been a trade request here but an understanding that this isn’t working for either side right now. The Jets are looking to see what they can get for him.”

Even though the Oilers are looking to add depth on the right side, I’d hope the Oilers and Oilers fans give this young Russian a hard pass. He’s not of NHL caliber now and I’d question if he ever was.

Apparently, the Habs could have interest in him but I say let them have him. Maybe Radulov, Markov, and Emelin can do something for him.

What do you say? Would you take a flyer on Burmistrov? Let us know in the comments below. Cheers!

ICYMI: Check out last night’s Oilers’ highlights BLH-Style!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI8s2GZ2-zk

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Armchair GM, Beer League Hero, Edmonton Oilers, NHL

2017: The Year of the Oilers

Happy Oilers New Year to everyone back home in the West! I hope you all had a good one last night and that you were all responsible (at least with your transportation, who you went home with at the end of the evening is on you. lol).

The Oilers did not win last night and that was disappointing. The Canucks are right horrible and Edmonton shouldn’t have too much of a problem taking them to the toolshed on a consistent basis from here on out BUT they ran into a ridiculously hot Jacob Markstrom and 42 saves later the Canucks had the two points whilst Edmonton rang in the new year with a Bettman point firmly in hand.

They really need to do something about their OT and shootout performances, right? I mean what coach doesn’t have their shootout top 5 looking like this for EVERY shootout:

  1. McDavid
  2. Eberle
  3. Draisaitl
  4. Letestu
  5. Nugent-Hopkins

Surely they want to win every game possible…

That being said, there were some nice performances put on by Cam Talbot, Drake Caggiula, Jesse Puljujarvi (did you see that shot that took Markstrom by surprise?), Nuge, McDavid, Eberle, Draisaitl, and Russell. Then there were some not so good performances by the Gryba/Davidson pairing (-2 on the evening), Kassian wasn’t at his best, and I was left wanting from Maroon a bit.

These things happen, though. Edmonton, IIRC, is 4-0-2 in their last 6 games and that is de-cent. I’m not a huge fan of dropping points to inferior teams, especially when those points are as precious as they are in a division as tight (and horrible) as the Pacific is.

https://youtu.be/nI8s2GZ2-zk

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A New Year and Some Possible Changes

So, something has been bothering me this year and I need to get it off of my chest.

I find it harder and harder to participate on Twitter each time there’s an Oilers game on. Mostly, I find I’m having a hard time taking the characters that are extreme eye-test or extreme analytics seriously.

If you get on Twitter during an Oilers game, you can usually find the usual suspects commenting every time. But here’s the thing. With the fancies, I want to be open-minded but I don’t think I can with the current group (apart from G Money of course but that’s because he’s a level-headed fella that can speak to my level and he’s a cool dude to boot.) because they’re just turning into dicks to be frank. If the calculations are not done their way with the numbers they have, then anything else MUST be, and these are the new oilogosphere buzzwords for 2017, “Snake Oil” or “Black Box Analytics”.

Are any of the “numbers guys” who populate the Oilogosphere willing to get in contact or have had contact with Stathletes or Truperformance (for example) to get a grip on how they’re accumulating their stats or will they continue to take to the Twitter machine to discredit them.

https://twitter.com/dstaples/status/815236169034186752

I thought that getting as much info as possible was more beneficial to the statistics community than getting less. David Staples has a great article up now (click above) on Truperformance that details how they determine their numbers and I’m absolutely for their method because you cannot, in my opinion, judge the game of hockey solely by the numbers you scrape from NHL.com. The game has to be watched and it should be watched by former NHL players, coaches, or scouts because they’d know what to look for. So, despite what Andrew Berkshire says about Former Oiler Brad Werenka’s company, I dig their methods.

Personally, I wondered how cool it would be to go to work for Truperformance and learn how to watch a game properly and learn the values of certain plays and situations. Just to gain that sort of education on the game of hockey would be so valuable.

The numbers, for me at least, I have a simple grasp upon. Enough to get what I want out of them at this point. I’ve got all of Rob Vollman’s Hockey Abstracts and his new book, Stat Shot. So any questions I may have, the answers aren’t far behind. Just now, I won’t be heading to Twitter for my queries and curiosities. It’s become too toxic for me.

As for the eye-test extremists, they’re just as hard to talk to because they won’t see it any other way. A bit maddening it be. I love hockey and I love the Oilers more but I just want to enjoy the game in a way where I’m not coming away being frustrated at anything more than a poor performance from the Oilers.

I think the healthy thing would be to enjoy the game the way I see fit and ignore those that don’t allow me to do so. I don’t like being snarky online, nor in real life, as it doesn’t get you anywhere. Sarcastic, yes! Dickish, no.

Jesse and the Rippers

Jesse Puljujarvi and Drake Caggiula are coming on, I feel it. And who would’ve known? Give the kids some consistent TOI and they tend to show up. It’s a battle that has been going on all season, do you send those two down to the AHL and bring up Anton Lander and Anton Slepyshev? I don’t know anymore. Pulju and Drake have a combined 15 points I think and that’s not enough production for a third line (or fourth line depending on who you ask) for me. But would Lander and Slepyshev do better and with Pouliot? I have a difficult time saying no but you know when you see Caggiula and Puljujarvi playing good, you want to see more of that! IT’S TEARING ME APART!!

The decent thing about this predicament is that when the Oilers make the playoffs, the depth is going to be ridiculous ESPECIALLY when the Oilers deal for Duchene and Halak 😉

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