Welcome to the day after St. Patrick’s day. I hope everybody had a good time, but now we have to get back to business. And by business, I mean grinding out this season. As little good that winning does to the Oilers now, that pasting of the Leafs made the final stretch just that much more bearable. Yeah, it put the team into a tie with Arizona who have been awful in every game they played that wasn’t against the Oilers, but any time you can make Phil Kessel question his life choices you know it was all worth it. And the timing of that 1st goal was superb. Just as the lost souls started cheering GO LEAFS GO for the 1st time the puck was behind Bernier. Classic.

For all the love that Todd Nelson is getting (and deserving) the Oilers are still painfully bad 5v5. Yes, the goaltending hasn’t bailed them out or kept them in games enough. That’s not on coaching. I still firmly believe that if the Sabres can get good goaltending from 2 unproven players all year then bad teams don’t affect goaltending half as much as people want to believe. However, even if remove the goaltending from the situation, the Oilers are underperforming at Even Strength.

Since February 1st the Oilers PP has been a killer (we’ll see that in the Keys to the game), but the 5v5 metrics are awful. Edmonton is 26th in Corsi For percentage (45.7%) over that time. They aren’t particularly great at preventing shot attempts but they are actually worse are generating them. They just don’t spend enough time in the offensive zone. That translates in to shots as well. The opposition has taken 53 more shots than the Oilers over the last 20 games at Even Strength. That’s bad, but at least it isn’t Calgary Flames bad who have given up 111 more shots to the opposition 5v5 over their last 20 games.

So not even accounting for spotty goaltending, the Oilers are a leaky boat when it comes to possession and shot share. Combine that with the worst PDO (on ice shooting percentage plus on-ice save percentage) and you get a real disaster. But a lot of the struggles of this team are a result of the current roster. As much as Nelson can affect the man-advantage, it’s almost impossible to overcome the loss of Taylor Hall and what that means to this team. He is a driving force (2nd highest raw CF% among forwards) and when he’s back in the lineup it pushes Pouliot and Purcell further down the depth chart. It’s a cascading effect on the whole team.

I feel slightly robbed of what Taylor Hall could be doing under Todd Nelson’s watch. Too many offensive players have started producing again for me not to dream about it. If RNH, Yakupov, and Eberle can start to dial up their offense, why should Hall be any different? Soon enough he should be ready to come back.

Getting Hall back wont fix the team’s 5v5 woes completely, because he isn’t also two 1st pairing defensemen, but it’s a start and he’s ever so slowly getting ready to return.

LINEUP

Matt Fraser is quite obviously questionable after taking what I thought was a filthy hit from Kadri. The Leafs center immediately stopped and checked in on the downed Fraser, so I’m not going to label him the monster that Zack Kassian is, but it was a dirty play. He came in from the blind side with his elbows out and made contact principally with the head of a player who was unable to protect himself. And, whether he meant to or it was just a natural reaction, he also ended up briefly leaving his feet in the follow through. On tape it looks bad. That’s why Kadri is getting 4 games. In any event, Fraser MIGHT actually be able to come back to game action thought that’s probably not advisable. Andrew Miller has been called up from OKC on an emergency basis. I don’t know if he plays but he might. The team still has 1 non-emergency call up because they used most of the final call ups right away so they had players eligible for the AHL playoffs. I fully expect Scrivens to keep going in net. NIkitin is ACTUALLY supposed to play, not that you believe me.

Pouliot RNH Eberle
Purcell Roy Yakupov
Hendricks Gordon Klinkhammer
Miller Lander Hamilton

Klefbom Schultz
Marincin Fayne
Nikitin Ference

Scrivens

OILERS KEYS TO THE GAME

1) Nelson’s PP. Ahem. The Power Play under Todd Nelson is far and away better than it was under Eakins and the best part is that it isn’t all luck based. I mean the team’s shooting percentage is double what it was under Eakins, but they are also creating more shots, shot attempts, and legitimate scoring chances. If we break it down into the performance since the All-Star break when we believe Nelson might have really been able to get the team to practice his systems, then the Oilers are a top 10 team in almost every metric and number 1 in efficiency. The Pontiac Firebird that is Todd Nelson’s Power Play is firing on all cylinders.

2) Confidence. It’s impossible to hold onto forever as it comes and goes from hockey players for reasons that nobody can properly explain, but right now it is with the Oilers scorers. They have scored 12 goals in the last 3 games (winning only 1 of them) and for a few minutes on Monday they looked completely unstoppable. The top line is going. The Yak line is going. Lander is going. They are just a few timely saves away from feeling bullet proof. Overconfidence is never good, but confidence coupled with hard work is a damned fine mix. For a team so close to the bottom of the standings, the fact that they can feel good about anything is a miracle.

3) Stand by Your Man. I will harp on Andrew Ference for being a step slow and at times ineffective, but in terms of stepping up and coming to the aid of a teammate or responding to shady hits he is still doing his job just fine. He was going to wallpaper Kadri with a hit that Kadri saw coming. It was in response to Fraser taking that blindside hit to head. It WAS going to be a clean hit but Kadri turned his back at the last second. Ference still stapled Kadri with the hit. Was it technically clean? No way. Was it appropriate? Absolutely. It sends a message not really to the other team, but to your own that you have their backs one way or another. That is somebody is going to take liberties with you then one of your teammates will step up. As barbaric as that might sound to some, team sport at the professional level still functions with those social rules.

Puck drops tonight at 8:08 PM Mountain Time on Sportsnet Oilers. Tank On!

Follow me on Twitter @Archaeologuy

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