Oilers should give Ryan Nugent-Hopkins the green light
By Paul Cholewa
The Oilers should insert a green-light volume shooting focused Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, to give a predictable power play a new element to catch teams off-guard.
The Edmonton Oilers last season had a historic 32.4 power-play percentage that raised many eyebrows across the league. With much attention brought their way, an intense focus is harboured by the other 31 teams on how to hinder dangerous scoring opportunities that the Oilers can produce.
Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl will always be respected by other teams for their quick snapshots, or slap shots from the latter’s patent-pending “Rockstar Zone”. Also adding more stress to the opposing team’s gameplan with Evan Bouchard waiting on the blue line, teams often forget or leave Ryan Nugent-Hopkins unmarked.
We’d say take advantage of that.
Now we don’t need people to remind us that Nugent-Hopkins was a 30+ goal-scorer, with 15 of them coming on the power play. We’re well aware of his stats from last year, but you must agree that Nugent-Hopkins’ role on the power play is as a distributor, not a finisher.
As an exercise, the next time you watch an Oilers game and they are on the power play, predict where the puck goes. Say it out loud and annoy the person next to you; you’ll find yourself being right with the calls the majority of the time, because … the Oilers’ power play has become predictable.
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Insert a green-light volume shooting focused Nugent-Hopkin. Now a predictable power play has a wild card element that’ll catch teams second-guessing their reads and assignment on the penalty kill.
When teams are hyper-focused on clogging the middle lane to avoid the cross pass to Draisaitl and keeping McDavid marked at all times, it allows Nugent-Hopkins a lane and time that other Oilers on the ice wish they had. A perfect example is his 3-3 goal against the Canucks last Saturday.
The Canucks were clogged in the middle, and by the time the nearby defender Filip Hronek realized Nugent-Hopkins was shooting it, he was looking at the puck that was in his net.
Of course, this shouldn’t be the first play Glen Gulutzan and company draw up when entering the powerplay. However, when teams decide to respect Nugent-Hopkins’ shot, the opposing penalty kill will spread out.
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When they spread out, the cross-crease pass to Draisaitl opens up and/or McDavid isn’t as heavily marked. Giving Nugent-Hopkins an aggressive green light on the power play makes it less predictable where the puck goes next, adding another obstacle for opposing coaches to try to contain.