Edmonton Oilers: End of season player report cards

Nuuuuuuuge

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is the guy who’s been there and done that in an Oilers uniform.  He was here almost the entire dark days and is surely glad the team is on the upswing now.  Although technically his stats took a bit of a dive this season, it’s nothing to be concerned about as in a full season he projected out to 77 points – he finished with 22-31-61 in 65 games.  That’s flirting with the PPG mark which is awesome.  With a full season, he would’ve set a new career-high this year.  He picked up his game in the playoffs – 2-6-8 in 4 games.  Fantastic.

As you might expect, he’s #3 on the team in PP ice time, clocking in 3:45 a game next only to the McDrai duo.  he put up 7-17-24 on the PP out of his 61 total points.  He spends more time on the PK than the McDrai duo, though, clocking in at 1:43 per game.  Total ice time for Nuge was at 20:28 per game, 6th on the team.  Although as a winger these days he doesn’t take a whole lot of faceoffs, he still took 404 this season, good enough for 5th on the team and 50.7% – 1st time in his career he’s cracked the 50% mark.

Much like with the McDrai duo, Nuge could use a little improvement away from the puck.  He finished well enough in the regular season at +1 – a huge improvement from last year when he was -13.  But he regressed a bit in the playoffs, finishing those 4 games with a -2, which is not good.  That’s going to have to get better.

One thing I wonder about Nuge is whether he feels better or worse not being the franchise saviour now.  Does he like or hate a lower profile on the team now?  We’ll probably never get an honest answer to the question, but it’s interesting to think about.  In either case, he’s still a core player who forms a great winger on the port side for Dr. Drai.  Long live the Nuge.

Oscar Klefbom

Unless a clear upgrade can be had for Klefbom, expect him to remain on the Oilers for the foreseeable future.  We might have a bit of a derailment on our hands with the career of this young man, though, when we found out this.

If Klefbom is out for the entirety of next season, that would be a huge blow to our D corps.  Unless Holland is able to pull off a trade for Oliver Ekman-Larsson or something, then the Klefbom injury will definitely affect us for next season.  In either case, whether he is in the lineup for next season or not, he’s still a huge part of the future, signed for 3 more seasons at a great value contract of $4.167 million a year.

Anyway, Klefbom did suffer some injury trouble, as did most of the team this year.  In fact, we just found out he’s been playing with an injured shoulder for 2 seasons now.  What’s really amazing, though, is Klefbom was still able to lead the Oilers from the blueline in terms of offence, putting up 5-29-34 and another 2 assists in 4 games.

If he has a chronic shoulder injury, he hid it well.  Even more remarkable is the improvement in his own zone play we saw from Klefbom, and not just by a little bit either.  Klefbom finished with an ugly -17 in the regular season but improved to 0 in the playoffs.  Talk about elevating your defensive game… if only he could put up that number in the regular season, we might get another win or 2 out of it.  Let’s hope that ugly +/- is a product of his shoulder injury.

As you would expect, Klefbom is the Oiler’s main weapon from the point on the PP.  He’s #4 on the team in PP time at 3:38 per game.  On the PP he put up 2-16-18 of his 34 points.  That’s just over half his points on the PP, which I’d be more concerned about if he was a forward, but fortunately, he’s not.  Amazingly, he leads the team on the PK in ice time, at 2:29 per game.  He also led the team in blocked shots with 180.

In fact, Klefbom leads the team in ice time, at 25:25 per game.  That’s also #5 in the league by the way – only Kris Letang, Roman Josi, Drew Doughty, and Thomas Chabot play more than Klefbom does. Naturally, he plays a lot of important minutes.  Let’s hope for a speedy recovery from whatever route he chooses and that Holland can pull a rabbit out of his hat in trade, otherwise our offence from the blueline will dip hard next season.

Darnell Nurse

A lot of fans want to trade Nurse for some reason.  I am not one of them.  Nurse creates a great duo on the left side of the D corps with Klefbom.  1 of only 3 players to play full time and remain healthy all of last season, Nurse anchored our 2nd pairing and then anchored the 1st for a while as well.

He finished the year just behind Klefbom with 5-28-33 and a -2, which is much better defensively than Klefbom was – it’s amazing what health can do for an NHL player.  He also brings an element of physicality to his game, as he was #2 on the team in PIMs last year, with 48.  Only Zack Kassian had more.

In the playoffs, he put up the same 2 assists in 4 games as Klefbom did but regressed a little to -3.  Look for Tippett to challenge him to improve on that.  Nurse is in the middle of his PPY, and although he regressed a little bit from the 41 points he put up 2 seasons ago, his 33 points this year were still the 2nd best totals of his career.  He turned 25 midseason so he’s already in his prime and I’d love to see what we do for a followup with this guy.

Nurse does spend time on the PP as well, playing the point on the 2nd PP unit.  He clocks in about 1:04 per game on the PP, and put up 0-5-5 on the PP of his 33 points.  He was a pretty big part of the PK this year too, clocking 2:02 on the PK, good enough for 5th on the team.  Overall he was 2nd on the team in ice time, clocking in at 23:27 per game.  He also led the team in hits last season with 172 and was 2nd on the team in blocked shots with 141.  Not to mention he was 2nd on the team in PIMs with 48.

The 1 thing that concerns me a bit about Nurse is he took 26 fewer shots than 2 seasons ago and his shooting % regressed from 5.1% to 2.9%.  Let’s hope he improves on that as he’ll be an even more key member of the blueline if indeed Klefbom is out for the entire season next year.