This evening we will be treated to game 2 in the Oilers/Sharks first round playoff series but before I get to that I want to touch on a few things in game one as I took the chance to watch the game again to see if I could notice what everyone was getting on about.
GAME 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UryV6sLhzhU
THAT is how you ring in the first playoff game in ten years, right? I had a feeling that the Oilers would do something special with the anthem and it clearly impressed the players and I know that because when the anthem was being sung, the cameraman was focused on Lucic and the look on his face said it all (about 0:49 into the video above).
As for the actual game, I was not surprised one bit that Edmonton came out flying nor was I surprised when they lost momentum. There was no way that that adrenaline was going to carry them for 60 minutes. Not that it wasn’t for a lack of trying, I think that the crowd tried their damnedest as well to try and lift the team up on numerous occasions.
To get more specific these things stood out for me:
Nerves – The Oilers looked like a very nervous team as the game wore on. The cute little passes weren’t connecting and the home run passes weren’t either. They couldn’t keep possession in the Sharks end for any sustained amount of time and the vets on San Jose were eating them alive.
The Hits – I loved how they boys came out with a fire in their belly and were determined to seek & destroy… See what I did there. Kassian is a beast!
Brent Burns – Yikes kids! Gotta get a handle on this guy as it seems he’s running the show for the Sharks right now.
Eric Gryba – I don’t think he had THAT bad of a game but unfortunately was on the ice for two key goals against. That said, I’m not sure Matt Benning would’ve fared any better and I’d rather have veterans in the lineup than rookies if all things are equal.
Penalties – The Oilers took some shady PIMs last time, some I can agree with and some I think the ref blew completely, like Gryba’s elbow on Couture… Brutal call from the ref there. But Edmonton has to refrain from taking shitty penalties in the Sharks end.
Connor McDavid – He had his chances to put the game to bed but couldn’t get the puck over Jones’ pad. But I’m not so disappointed at that as the mad hooking calls that weren’t called on the Sharks when they tried to stop him.
Tim Peel – I knew as soon as I saw that he would be officiating the Oilers/Sharks series that we were in for a “treat”…
SHOOT THE BLOODY PUCK! – 17 shots is simply not going to cut it if the Oilers are going to make it to round 2. For this reason alone I would have Anton Slepyshev in the lineup. He can do everything Iiro Pakarinen can do but at least he shoots.
GAME 2
I know that Todd McLellan doesn’t like to flip guys out of the lineup after a less than stellar performance but this is the playoffs baby and there’s no time like the present. I’d take out Desharnais and Pakarinen and replace them with Matt Hendricks and Anton Slepyshev.
David Desharnais has shown me very little (is that a pun?) so far and him being demoted to the 4th line tells me the coach is also thinking the same. I know that you’re thinking that Matt Hendricks is too slow and the game has passed him by but how many minutes does the 4th line get anyhow? I don’t believe it’s enough time to concern yourself with them being a huge risk to winning game 2.
I think there are some people who think that Drake Caggiula should come out due to the fact that he took a couple of dodgy penalties last game but to me, he was looking great! He was tenacious on the puck and reminded me a bit of Esa Tikkanen. He should stay in.
Faceoffs – I believe Hendricks (Or Anton Lander) would help here. Leon Draisaitl was the only positive player on the dot in game 1.
KISS – Keep it simple stupid! None of this cute shit. Get the passes on the tape, move the feet, shoot the puck. The Oilers really are a much more skilled team and they failed to capitalize on that in the first game.
Shadow? – If the Oilers put a guy on Brent Burns from the get go, how much of a difference do you think that would make? I mean he had more shot attempts than the Oilers 1st line in the opening game…
Boom Shacka Lacka! – Keep up the physical play for the whole match and I would target Couture/Pavelski for sure.
Connor McDavid is on a 15 game scoring streak going back into the regular season and I fully expect him to put up another point or two tonight. One player on the Sharks that looks to be heating up is Tomas Hertl and Edmonton might be smart to not forget about the damage he did two nights ago.
What do you think the Oilers should do? Let us know in the comments below!
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Another regular season over and we can now get to the good stuff. This year had some great stories with one of the better ones being that we get 5 Canadian teams in the playoffs a year after none had performed well enough to challenge for the Cup in ’16. Even as a Caps fan I appreciate the level of excitement that is raised a notch with Canadian teams included in the dance. Probably the best story of all is the rebounding of your Edmonton Oilers. Falling just short of a division winning season has to be considered a flat out success for the upstart Oilers and has given rise to some higher hopes for this season. Perhaps a chance at the conference final is even in order and after that who knows.
My predictions for the first round are:
Washington vs Leafs – Caps in 5. Caps depth proves too much for “happy-to-be-here” Leafs. Kuznetsov will be the x-factor for Caps throughout.
Pittsburgh vs Columbus – Jackets in 7. This will be a flat out war. Werenski health is a concern however. Bobrovsky is the key.
Montreal vs New York – Montreal in 6.
Goalie battle. Price frustrates Rangers enough. King Henry is not the goalie of old. Good because Habs will need soft goaltending. Case closed.
Ottawa vs Boston – Boston in 5.
Bruins hot at right time. Karlsson may not be at 100%. Yikes. Marchand is a game changer.
Anaheim vs Calgary – Calgary in 7.
This series should be PG13. Bad blood and war of words already. Fowler loss huge for Ducks and Flames hungry. Tkachuk will keep Ducks pre-occupied.
Chicago vs Nashville – Hawks in 5.
As usual, Kane and co. should rise up over made over Preds team. Subban won’t be enough. Experience hurts here.
St. Louis vs Minnesota – Blues in 7
Minnesota different team last 20 games. St. Louis different team last 20 games. Both different directions however. Shattenkirk loss hasn’t hurt Blues. Minnesota trending down.
Edmonton vs San Jose – Oilers in 7
While the Sharks experience counts for something here, the age of that experience may be catching up. Injuries haven’t helped Sharks here either. McDavid is operating on another planet and he’ll be enough to keep surging Oilers in the loop. The Oilers just have to take one game at a time and don’t get ahead of themselves. There is a lot of excitement in Oil country right now and with that comes expectations. It’ll be interesting to see how young Oilers respond after the inevitable loss. I suspect they’ll be fine and with McDavid having played high pressure since he was 3 I am confident he’ll perform at his regular pace. He lives for big moments. Keep an eye on 14 when it comes to a key goal. I for one have been waiting to see Eberle in big games since his world Jr days.
Should be a fun round.
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Who’s the favourite? We know the Oilers are going to play San Jose first, but in the big picture, who should the Oilers want to play most/least? Enquiring minds want to know!
There is no magical way to ‘know’ what’s going to happen in the various series, but we can look at how the season has shaped up and make some decent guesses about who to favour.I’m going to walk through a few different methods and we’ll see what we see.
Don’t Use Standings
First, one thing that I’ll start with is to stay you can generally throw the regular season standings (or points) out the window.There is a fairly weak relationship between points and post-season success (though it may surprise you to learn that the PresCup winner, far from being ‘cursed’, actually tends to do quite well in the post-season).
Head to Head Score Adjusted Corsi
Our first data stop will look at how the various West teams fared head to head in 5v5 score adjusted Corsi. Since the refs tend to put away their whistles in the post season, the importance of 5v5 is magnified, so this gives us a sense of how the ‘playoff’ part of their games went.
From an Oilers perspective, MIN and ANA look like good matchups, while the others, especially CGY, CHI, and S.J look like tougher matches. But wait! Didn’t we go undefeated against CGY?? Not to mention STL? How is this possible?
Actually, this is the weakness of any statistical look – small sample size. In the case of CGY vs EDM, the Oilers blew out the Flames early in several games. For example, the first game of the season, the gameflow looks like this:
The Oilers basically ran up the score early, dominated for most of the game, and then went into a defensive shell – which allowed the Flames to run up the fancystat counters, even as their loss was already written. Same story in the last game of the season, where the Oilers ran up a 5-0 edge and then coasted.
Now you might ask, isn’t score adjustment supposed to take care of that? Well – yes, sort of. It takes care of that at a statistical level. The score adjustment is done based on league wide averages.So it works really well when you get at least 10 to 20 games of data, enough where the averages start to apply in a meaningful way.
But a score adjustment at a game level, or even at a season series of 4 or 5 games, while it will almost always push the fancystats in the right direction, won’t necessarily be reflective of that game or games. Especially if there were blowouts, as there were twice in this series.
So I wouldn’t take these numbers too seriously. That’s why I put this look first – it’s actually not that reliable IMO. It’s more for interest.
And as we’ll see later, if the Oilers face the Flames, take the Oilers all the way!
Head to Head Records
I don’t actually know if anyone has tested to see if head to head records have any predictive power for the post-season (my gut says probably not), BUT I sure do like this!
Now Edmonton is starting to look more like a powerhouse than a weak sister, yes?If Talbot Talbots and McDavid McDavids, the Oilers can beat anyone.
And of course, the weak sister in the West is in fact … Da Flames.
By the way, you might be wondering – isn’t this basically PLUS MINUS, and isn’t PLUS MINUS the pariah of the fancystats world?
Indeed, it is – at the player level. That’s for two reasons – the assignation of plus minus at the player level is extremely noisy, and because goals are such rare events, it takes multiple seasons to generate enough player sample size to overcome that noise – and by that time, your player has usually changed (situation, or even age!)
We don’t have as much noise, or as much of a sample size problem at the team level though, which is why goal differential works pretty well.
Score and Venue Adjusted [Corsi, Fenwick, Expected Goals]
Now let’s get on to some actual fancystats. I’m using Corsi, Fenwick, and corsica’s xGF.Corsi has historically been something of a gold standard for predicting the future.What’s interesting though is there’s an argument to be made that this relationship may be weakening as more teams pay attention to shots/possession and the resulting ‘market efficiency in action’ takes away some of the advantage historically measured by shot metrics.
We’re going to take the full seasons 5v5 measures and rank teams that way. So we’ll roll all three together to get a sense of where the teams fit:
Ooh, that’s a bit ugly, isn’t it?The Oilers are much weaker by this measure – ranking 7th, 2nd, and 6th out of 8.So why such a big difference from goal differential?
Well, the easiest way to way outperform (or underperform) your underlying shot metrics is through the quality of goalering (you can also do it through special teams but I’d say that’s ‘harder’ in some sense).So I think this really reflects the fact that Cam Talbot this season has been incredible – arguably a Top 4 or Top 5 goalie league-wide.
If the Oilers are to have success in the post-season, he’s going to have to continue his strong play. No surprise there.
San Jose looks a lot like the powerhouse that made it to the Cup Finals last year. Not going to be an easy series!
I guess the saving grace is that the Flames are still weak at 5, 8, and 8.
Tweaking the Fancystats
There’s an interesting tweak we can make to these numbers to increase their assessment/prediction capability. One of the things we know is that shot metrics in-season have their peak predictivity around 20 to 25 games, after which there is a slow decline in predictivity. Some of that is due to increasing randomness as games predicted declines.
But I think a significant part of it is also that teams change over the course of the season. Key players get hurt (or come back from injury).Sometimes coaches change.Teams get into a groove or fall out of one.
So we have this balance to find – we want the maximum amount of data possible, but if we use data that’s too old, it isn’t actually reflective of the team right now.
As it turns out, using the last 25 games gives adequate data volume and yet doesn’t get overloaded with games from early in the season that aren’t really indicative of a team now, producing a fairly high level of predictivity. (see for example Micah Blake McCurdy’s work on his Oscar prediction model).
So let’s look at two things – how a team did over the last 25 games of the season, and also the trend of that data, as a bit of a projection as to the direction of the teams level of play.(Note: out of laziness, I’ve taken data for the Oilers from Feb 15th, which equates to 25 games. Other teams may be a bit more or less – ha ha, too bad for them! More seriously, it shouldn’t change the results much, if at all)
Let’s take a look.
Here’s the West teams from best to worst in SACF% over the last 25 games:
Oooh.Still sucks to be the Oilers on that basis though, doesn’t it?But we also know that those 25 games started with a fairly poor stretch for the Oilers, but they’ve been coming on strong of late. And the opposite is true for the Flames. So let’s look at the trend over those games too.
Hmm, that’s encouraging, right? Despite the rather soft numbers the Oilers put up in the second half, in fact (as the eyes would suggest), the Oilers appear to be improving in a big way as they head towards the post-season. Yeah!
Cowtown on the other hand – again, as the eyes would suggest – are sliding back to Earth after the unsustainable hot streak that pulled them into the playoffs.
San Jose has solid numbers, but is neither hot nor cold.
I’ll leave you to mull over the rest of the trends.
Putting it All Together
We’ve taken a few different looks at how teams did in the regular season to get a sense of how they might fare in the playoffs.Now, has this work given you the definitive guide to who’s going to win the West?
Ha, of course not! Statistics give you a sense of which way the probabilities lean, they are most certainly not fait accompli.
Rather, what we’ve got is some sturdy data to suggest which teams are leaning positive and which are leaning negative.
You still have to understand context though. Statistically, Anaheim is looking pretty good – but if Lindholm, Vatanen, and Fowler are out or not 100%, that’s a huge hit. Ditto San Hoser and Jumbo Joe. (In fact, one of the defining characteristics of Cup champions is that they are good and healthy when they hit the playoffs, and are still mostly healthy, or at least healthier than their opponents, by the time they get to the finals).
The Oilers meanwhile actually look pretty good, my friend!Probably not to win it all, but I’d say we’ll be a tough out even for a legit contender.
And with McDavid and Dadbot on our side, anything can happen.
Bring it on!
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The Hockey News Future Watch issue dropped some time ago and I’m just getting around to checking out how the Oilers did. Now, this is one of my favorite issues of The Hockey News, my other being the draft preview issue, and in this year’s version, the Oilers were ranked 4th in the team rankings and given a grade of A-. Meaning they have the 4th best set of top-10 prospects and 21-and-under NHLers overall. Last season they were 7th overall with a grade of B+.
OILERS IN THE TOP 100 PROSPECTS
Jesse Puljujarvi (no.2)
Laurent Brossoit (no.78)
If not for Connor and Leon, I’m not sure how the Oilers would’ve made the top 15 in the team rankings and it doesn’t bode well that they’ve only got two players in the top 100. That being said, we don’t have to agree with writers over at THN.
THN’s OILERS TOP TEN PROSPECTS
Jesse Puljujarvi
Laurent Brossoit
Tyler Benson
Griffin Reinhart
Caleb Jones
Jujhar Khaira
Markus Niemelainen
Ethan Bear
Aapeli Rasanen
Dylan Wells
THN has a cut-off of 50 games where they’ve decided that after 50 games, a player isn’t a prospect but an NHLer at that point. But they also say that some players are too established to be prospects. Players like Sebastien Aho and Matt Tkachuk fall in the later category. Lastly, THN adds that some players revert to prospect status because they’ve spent the year in a development league or abroad. Those players would be guys like Valeri Nichushkin or Jake Virtanen.
BLH’s TOP TEN OILERS PROSPECTS
Jesse Puljujarvi (RW)
Drake Caggiula (LW)
Anton Slepyshev (RW)
Matt Benning (RD)
Ethan Bear (RD)
Laurent Brossoit (G)
Caleb Jones (LD)
Jujhar Khaira (LW)
Nick Ellis (G)
Griffin Reinhart (LD)
See, for my list, I define a prospect as a player that isn’t yet a regular for the Oilers or is playing in a development league. A regular is someone who gets in the line-up at least 75% of the time. I’d also like to add first year pros to this list.
Right away I imagine you’re asking yourself where Tyler Benson is and I’ll be honest with you, I can’t put a player on my list who isn’t playing games. 63 games over the past two years isn’t satisfactory in my books. When he did play he did perform though (42pts in 33 games) but it just worries me that a player this young is running into some major injury problems before playing a single game against men. What happens when (or IF) he makes the jump? All those stats he racked up in midget won’t mean a thing if he can’t stay healthy.
Pulju is no.1 and that’s to nobody’s surprise. I’ve watched 4 or 5 Bakersfield games this year and he most definitely stands out. His skating and puck control shines brightly but you’d like to see him shoot more. A problem with most young players is they tend to defer the shot to a linemate unless their name is Ovechkin or Laine, right? He’s putting up very respectable numbers down in the AHL for being most likely the youngest player in the league too. Do I see him as no.1 RW in 2017? I hope so. If he’s taking the Leon Draisaitl path to NHL stardom, I’ll be stoked.
I’ve got Anton Slepyshev up there because I feel he’s right on the cusp of being a full-timer in the NHL. He’s got all the physical tools and when I watch him he looks like a player who if given the right linemates and TOI could become a solid second/third-line sniper. All he wants to do is shoot but he needs to be more consistent and earn the coach’s trust, something that’s been a stumbling block this season.
Drake Caggiula and Matthew Benning are coming in right out of college and have displayed an adequate level of proficiency at the NHL level. Benning more so at the beginning of the season and Caggiula more so in the latter bit of the year. I believe both would’ve benefitted greatly with some AHL seasoning and a call-up after the trade deadline but it is what it is. I love both players’ willingness to compete and get their noses dirty and I see them as fixtures in the Oilers lineup for some time to come.
Ethan Bear and Caleb Jones are looking to be fantastic players and we’ll get to witness their development in Bakersfield starting next season. I’m not too sure what that knock is on Jones but Bear’s is his wheels, lucky for him that he’s producing some mad stats in Seattle though and I’m hoping he can improve his skating at the next level. I don’t expect to see these boys in a regular season game for Edmonton for at least two seasons but at that point, they should be more than ready to go.
We’ve been waiting for Laurent Brossoit for the better of two seasons and now we’ve got Nick Ellis coming. Personally, I like Ellis a bit better because his first go at pro hockey has had fewer ups and downs but with the chances Brossoit has been given this year, he’s shown that he’s got a bit of the organized chaos to his game and that entertains me. That could partly be why Todd McLellan has gone with Talbot more often than not too though.
Griffin Reinhart sounds like a hill that Peter Chiarelli is willing to die on and I’m willing to bet he’ll be the no.7 defender in Edmonton next season but I’m not sure he goes any higher at the NHL level. Is anybody else hoping that Chiarelli convinces Vegas to take Reinhart? Because he surely won’t get anything of value for him on the trade market.
Khaira, to me, will need more TOI to adapt to the pro game. He’s looks like he’s built out of bricks and he skates and handles the puck well enough. I think he lines up LW to Mark Letestu in 2017/18 and replaces Matt Hendricks if not lost in the expansion draft.
A final note on the Oilers prospects, where are the centers? It looks like the wings are in good hands, the defense is projecting well, and goaltending at the prospect level should be good to go for the next 4 years but the center position is lacking…
Here’s to the Oilers adding a Robert Thomas or a Nick Suzuki at the draft this summer!
THE OLYMPICS
I’m happy that the NHL has decided not to go to the Winter Olympics in South Korea. I think it’s time to give some other players a chance to show the world that Canada and the USA can send a competitive team made up of non-NHLers. I mean how curious would you be to see those rosters? Would they be filled with CHLers, CIS/NCAA players, European pros, or even recently retired NHLers (Hello Ryan Smyth)?
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I’ve heard the question asked,
“Would you feel less pride if Team Canada didn’t send their best players to the Olympics?”
I wouldn’t and I think that Canadians would cheer even harder because it’d be that much more challenging (I’d hope at least) for Team Canada to get the gold. I mean what is the point of the World Cup of Hockey? Isn’t that a best-on-best tournament? What do the Olympics add to the ice hockey that makes it better than the World Cup?
Everyone is crying,
“I want to see Connor and Sid on the same line!”
Give me a break! It’s not even fun to watch Canada in international play anymore with Babcock at the wheel. All they do us park the bus and choke their opponents out. I wanna see Connor raise the Stanley Cup over his head before throwing that Olympic gold around his neck. I’ll say that first and foremost.
I wouldn’t like to see anybody injured during a World Cup or the Olympics but with the Olympics being in the middle of the season and on the other side of the world where I live, that’s a helluva change for the players to take on for a couple of weeks mid-season.
As for allowing certain NHLers to play who say they don’t care if the NHL is going or not. Well, maybe we could see some big names hit with some huge punishments if that happens. Perhaps the KHL will gain a few more notable names in their league. Like, did NHL hockey players NOT want to go play in the Olympics before 1998?
Anyways, what do you think about my prospects list for the Oilers and do you have an opinion to share regarding the NHL’s decision on its participation at the Winter Olympics? Let us know in the comments below!
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For those about to rock……..The NHL’s playoffs begin April 12th and the Oilers are going to be playing some hot weather puck, finally. It’s going to be fun down at Rogers Place and 104Ave so enjoy the show.
As I intently watch the NHL standings by the day trying to figure out who the Caps will play, the matchup for the Oilers is also very intriguing.
While I expected the Caps to be where they are, I think it’s safe to say not many were picking the Edmonton Oilers to win the division. Now not many are nor should they be surprised with the season McDavid has had. The kid is ridiculously good. With some predicting Hart and Art Ross trophies for 97 at the pre-set of the 2016-17 season, McDavid has proven that he is arguably the best player in the league. Not sure how much of an argument you need to make but for me it’s him. At this point, he should win both those awards and I suspect he’ll be voted by the players as their MVP as well.
With the team where it is now and factoring in the season it’s had, could the teams’ expectations be higher than the pre-season thoughts many in the city had of just battling for a playoff spot in March and then see what happens? And should those expectations be higher?
I would caution that given where the organization was just 1 year ago, the season should not be considered a failure should the team lose in the 1st rd. I’d go as far to say even if they were swept (not likely) I would still consider this season a success. Players will have played plenty of meaningful hockey and received a taste of playoff puck. This would only bold well for the future and with the young core players gaining valuable experience, you can bet it’ll pay off. That’s the kind of experience that money can’t buy.
Having said all that for me, and again as a non-biased but heavily watching Oiler observer, I think this team is not just ready to win just one round but make a deeper run into the second season.
Now I don’t need to use a bunch of stats and analytics here to make a case, the Oilers are peaking right now. The ‘ole eye test will do just fine thanks. A winning streak at home with their best players rolling on all cylinders has the Oilers on an arc that could win the division, if not at least gain home-ice advantage for the first round. Imagine that and think about where the team was with Dallas Eakins for instance. I’m still laughing…..
Given the wild Pacific division and they way the standings have changed in last 3 weeks would anyone argue that the Oilers couldn’t beat anyone in their division in a 7 game series? They absolutely could.
Starting in goal, you could make the argument the Oilers have the best goalie in the West conference playoffs this year in Cam Talbot. He’s played that good and that alone will get you some brownie points in winning a playoff series. You add in the additional bonuses of having the best player in the game and of course you can win a series…. or a few.
While I honestly do not care who the Capitals play because in my mind they should beat anyone in the East. Won’t be easy, but they are the best team and have handled the heavyweights, Pittsburgh and Columbus, well all season. But I will say this much, I would not want to mess with the Oilers as a Caps fan. The biggest reason for that is if it were to occur it’d be in the Stanley Cup Final and that would mean that the Oilers would have already won three rounds. That would be a different and very confident Oiler team than the one found in the first round. Of all teams that would benefit most from building momentum from winning one series to the next, it’d be the inexperienced Oilers. Now I’m still taking my Caps because of the depth and experience but I know all too well it’s no guarantee!!
With a little over a week away before the big dance, I get the feeling this city is like getting ready for the prom after years of high school. It’s going to be a party and it’s going to be awesome. Just remember to enjoy it. It’s been a long time.
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