Has Woodcroft found chemistry in Oilers lines this week? A deep dive

One step forward, one step back for Oilers defence

On defence, Bouchard made some early gaffs in Nashville (as we’ve seen from him recently), but followed them up with some great plays with traffic in front, that resulted in fortunate bounces:

Note in the above clip, we see Philip Broberg on his natural side connecting to Bouchard to begin the sequence. That’s a pairing you want to see a lot more of this season. They posted excellent results last season, including a decent 51.4 GF%, a dominant 59.5 xGF%, and a reassuringly low PDO of 0.979:

Their very low PDO suggested their on-ice goal share could very well have been as dominant as their expected goal share. That’s very promising for such an inexperienced second line, and hopefully we see more of it soon.

As the game in Nashville wore on, Bouchard began to excellently drove play, finishing with a team-leading 66 xGF% and 39 xGF% Rel at even strength. He made several passes of high quality, something he does each game regardless of any other errors made.

Bouchard was not so good in Philadelphia, making an awful giveaway when pressured alone in his own zone. On two different plays, Bouchard and Ekholm failed to make the right reads, and neither was prepared to pick up the slack on rush goals against.

Note that other players, such as McDavid on the PP and Foegele from Kulak at 5v5, made uncharacteristically “lazy” giveaways as well. The team can and has to clean these up:

Still, it must be acknowledged that Bouchard has four assists in four games this season. He is 9-31-40 in 37 games (!) since the arrival of Ekholm, including an outstanding playoffs from them as one of the league’s top pairings to end the season. Give us more, lots more, of Bouchard with the top guns, as his breakout passing – and that of Ekholm – are what is going to help get the Oilers out of this offensive lull.

In fact, I’m going to go ahead and predict Bouchard posts a point-per-game this season and makes a serious case for Norris consideration… unless he and his partner play down from their potential.

Riding the roller coaster with Nurse-Ceci

The unfortunate results from Darnell Nurse and Cody Ceci versus Nashville were contrasted by them being the only bright spots on defence against Philadelphia. In Nashville, they were badly outshot, outchanced, and outplayed at 5v5 in over 18 minutes TOI.

In Philadelphia, they split the shot count on net at 50.0 SF%. However, they posted the lion’s share of shot attempts and high danger attempts, with 55.6 CF% and 60.0 HDCF% respectively. They posted the best showing of any D-pair at 5v5:

Nurse-Ceci gave the team pretty much exactly what was needed out of them in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, history suggests that this was more of an anomaly for them, as their 2022-23 regular season track record contained relatively poor results in a large sample of over 1,000 minutes TOI:

Nurse-Ceci last season only scored 48.9% of the goals while on ice, and sawed-off the expected goals at exactly 50.0%. They did not manage to outplay their competition, and their PDO suggests these results were very sustainable.

The Oilers’ top 4 defence has been a story of two very different lines in the last year, with no end in sight. Let’s hope the Ekholm-Bouchard line returns to form and provides plenty of big numbers, because it’s not very likely the Nurse-Ceci pair can maintain their great play from Thursday night.

Rushing into it … or not

On another note, during the 2022-23 regular season the Oilers had the fifth-highest percentage of their total chances be rush chances out of all 32 teams:

The Oilers simply need to find ways to produce more rush opportunities under the new system, if they want to replicate the success of 2022-23. I believe the lack of rush chances by the McDavid and Ryan McLeod lines, driven by two excellent transition centremen, is a large reason they didn’t produce many actual high danger chances in Nashville, or goals at even strength in either game this week.

In Nashville, the McDavid and McLeod lines produced one tracked rush attempt each per NST, which is simply not enough. What’s worse is the entire team managed one tracked rush attempt in Philadelphia, while giving up three goals on rushes against as per my own tracking.

That’s 0-3 on the night off the rush.

Are they struggling to produce rush chances due to the new system? Are the line combinations sub-optimal? I think it’s a bit of both, and the bright spots give hope that some of the line combinations we’ve seen this week will find success as their luck (fourth-worst in the league at even strength, by measure of a 0.957 PDO) and system fall a bit into place.

Or else, we’ll be having more discussions in November.

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Note here that the Nugent-Hopkins line lacks the ability to perform consistent entry carries with the puck, and as such went 0-1 for rush attempts this week. However, they still thrived off the wingers’ puck retrieval and cycle abilities.

Line combinations involving Foegele paired with Hyman, and possibly the inclusion of Dylan Holloway and Connor Brown, could make the Oilers a team that creates a lot more offence off the cycle and forecheck, which would be a change of pace for the team. This will be interesting to follow, with my tendency to believe more in balanced line combinations that loosely involve a transitioner, a playdriver, and a shooter.

Players such as Kane — who thrive on the rush —  are best kept off of the Nugent-Hopkins line, where Kane-Nugent-Hopkins-Foegele in Philadelphia posted sub-39% shares in all major statistical categories. Ouch. However, Kane also counts on his centreman to generate rush chances chances; McDavid and McLeod can, and must, do much better at creating 5v5 rush chances.

Kane’s struggles continue

Now, when we talk about positional timing, i.e. arriving at the right scoring area at the right time to connect with the playdriver, I think often of Kane. Here are his production numbers and stats for recent seasons:

Kane had a career playoff performance in 2021-22, posting numbers that far exceed the rest of his trends, with a high PDO compared to his career average as well. His shooting percentage was double what he’d seen in previous playoff performances.

This could have been a product of high-quality feeds from the Oilers’ stars, but regardless it is unlikely we should hold Kane to that standard and expect success. Rather, look at his exceedingly low PDO so far this season and expect a bit of a return to his normal regular season form.

It’s unlikely Kane would so abruptly fall off the aging curve, but we’ve seen this recently with power forwards like Milan Lucic and Wayne Simmonds. Only time will tell.

Woodcroft also did well to keep the struggling Kane away from Nugent-Hopkins’ line in Nashville, and try to put him in a position to succeed with McDrai. He made a very smart choice to also give Kane a shot on the PK. History suggests this was a wise use of a skilled player for whom there is no room on the NHL’s best PP. Kane has a history of applying his hockey IQ to prevent chances on the PK:

The best options for the PK might be those skilled players who don’t make the cut on PP1, and can therefore take on the extra PK TOI, rather than the role-players one might expect to be counted on for the PK. Kane started off strong on the PK in Nashville by my eye, and was tasked with two defensive zone starts, but faded with time and posted -11 CF% Rel, -20 FF% Rel, and -0.47 xGF% Rel.

This is largely because Nugent-Hopkins-Mattias Janmark and Nurse-Ceci managed to get out of their zone and post a shot on net. The Oilers’ PK has led to many goals against so far this season, even though Woodcroft sent down the offensively-inclined Raphael Lavoie and Lane Pederson in favour of players with steady defensive and penalty-killing reputations.

Nonetheless, there was smart deployment of Kane at all strengths by Woodcroft, and the PK unit combinations were smart and varied, too. Kane did manage to make a chip ahead to McDavid, who earlier in this article I noted created something out of nothing (perhaps less than nothing, as he was impeded on the play).

TL;DR – The best bets for Game 5

I’d roll back the very successful Foegele-Nugent-Hopkins-Hyman line of the last two games, and garner a larger sample of it. The linchpin of Nugent-Hopkins’ success at centre is a winger pair that can strongly provide retrievals or entries carrying the puck, as well as cycle ability; Foegele-Hyman does the former and latter very well.

I’d swap Kane to McLeod’s wing, because Kane is struggling mightily and he has a history of strong play with McLeod. Kane excels off the rush and finding open ice rather than the retrievals and cycle that suit Foegele-Hyman well.

Kane is not a fit with Nugent-Hopkins at centre, and this should be avoided at basically all costs. Kane on his off-side with winger option Holloway is also an option. Their results together are tabulated below:

Kane-McLeod makes sense as a pairing of a volume shooter who excels on the rush, with a speedy transitional centreman. In a small sample in 2022-23, the pair dominated shot attempts, high danger shot attempts, and expected goals, posting 62 HDCF% and 64 xGF%.

Likewise, Kane on his off-side with Holloway produced promising results of 80 HDCF% and 70 xGF%. Holloway-McLeod should be better together versus NHL competition after another season of development and I’m strongly in favor of trying these three men together at 5v5.

Brown and Holloway both had strong pre-seasons and were decent versus the Predators, and either could be deployed to help give McDrai a boost at Woodcroft’s discretion.

All things considered, here is the next lineup I’d like to see in Game 5 on Saturday:

A final note: the Oilers are going to need some finishing ability on display soon, and the bottom 6 has no goals to this point in time. I’m looking at those names on right wing in the tweet above as those in the drivers seat for shot volume on these lines; the centres are capable as well.

If the bottom 6 fails to produce goals in the coming games… Lavoie and Pederson are going to become tempting options for GM Ken Holland.

Thanks for reading! Hit me up on X @TheLineBlender with your thoughts and hopes for the next game. Here’s hoping you enjoyed the article; see you next time!