The Edmonton Oilers are in the middle of a frustrating period where the team can’t seem to put up a winning effort. They need to be better and it doesn’t need to be a trade or in a personal change. What the Oilers are doing now isn’t working.
I have put together 3 things the Edmonton Oilers could do as a team to get better. These three things are things that could realistically happen by the end of the season. These are all reasonable things the team should be able to do without any drastic changes.
1. Consistent Line-up
The Edmonton Oilers have not had their full line-up since the first week of the season. Mike Smith has been injured for the majority of the season which is the largest part of not having a full line-up. There has also been a never ending parade to the COVID protocol list.
The majority of team has gone through COVID protocol at this point, so in theory from this point on we should be COVID free. Right now aside from COVID there is still Ryan Nugent-Hopkins out with a lower body injury, Kris Russel with an upper body, and Mike Smith with a thumb issue.
NHL injury visualization. Man games lost versus team wins. Bubble size represents cumulative quality of players lost (Lost-ps metric) https://t.co/CoOkCeeaAI pic.twitter.com/Fk88mdGNJR
— Man-Games Lost NHL (@ManGamesLostNHL) January 14, 2022
According to Man-Games Lost, the Edmonton Oilers were top 5 in man games missed. In the NHL you need all your players to be available if you want to have a chance to win games. If you keep having people in and out of your line-up on a day to day basis it’s hard to get in a grove and develop chemistry. As cliché as is sounds, the best ability is availability.
I think once the Edmonton Oilers get healthy they will be able to ice a better team. You will have more depth and skill in the bottom six which should help the depth scoring. There will also be no need to lean on younger players on the back end. Not having to play Lagesson or Markus Niemelainen is only going to improve your defensive core.
2. Growth from within the organization
I’m sure the Edmonton Oilers would love to make a trade, unfortunately they don’t have much cap space to bring in a player with skill without trading cap back. The players the Oilers would trade away to make cap space are either players that the Oilers want in their line-up or players other teams don’t want.
One way the Oilers can gain an skilled player is from within their own organization. A perfect example of this is Dylan Holloway. Holloway has been out the whole season so far recovering from wrist surgery. He was starting to skate with the team before he went on COIVD protocol earlier this month.
When he gets healthy I assume he will go down to the AHL and play some games with the Bakersfield Condors. If he plays well in those games he will find himself on the NHL team quickly. The Edmonton Oilers are dying for more skilled players that are cheap. Being on his entry level deal it doesn’t get much cheaper than Dylan Holloway.
You could also call up an older player that is having success on the Condors. Seth Griffith and Cooper Marody are both averaging more than a point per game in the AHL. I know that doesn’t correlate to points in the NHL, but at this point the Oilers need to try everything to get out of this slump.
3. Play with confidence
Right now the Edmonton Oilers are such a fragile team. It doesn’t help that they give up the first goal almost every game. This team now has the here we go again attitude. We saw this in the game against the Ottawa Senators on Saturday. Once Ottawa scored the first goal in the third then Edmonton Oilers started playing a different game, and it wasn’t a good one.
The need to get out of their own heads. If you let in one goal it is not game over. If your 2 goal lead gets down to one doesn’t mean they are going to score again. They do the opposite of what they should do.
When the current Edmonton Oilers face adversity they crumble and faltered. They need to do the opposite. If you get scored on, don’t fall back and make sure you don’t get scored on again, attack them back. Try and get that lead back. If you get a 2 goal lead, try to make it 3, stop trying to protect it.
I miss the late season Edmonton Oilers of last season. When they were trying to get Connor McDavid to 100 points. They were trying score at every opportunity, and for the most part they did. Right now it seems like they are trying to hard too score. Yes, you do need to try hard to score goals, but it just looks right now that they are squeezing the stick a little bit too hard.
This next game against the Florida Panthers is going to be an important one. The Panthers are coming off a loss to the Calgary Flames on Tuesday. Even if the Edmonton Oilers were playing good hockey this would be a tough game to win, the way they are playing now make it even more difficult. This is a game I will be okay with losing, but only if the Oilers play hard.