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 is struggling. but he basically returned to form after returning from injury last regular season. His 2021-22 playoff performance was a heater in many major stat categories, and should not be the standard we expect from him moving forward: pic.twitter.com/2ZHeYhTgU2
— Mark 📸 (@TheLineBlender) October 19, 2023
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:
Oilers 4x5 PK rankings (last two seasons)
— Blue Bullet Brad (@BlueBullet1981) September 22, 2023
Nuge, Janmark, Hyman, and Ryan should be given less PK time this season with McLeod, Kane, Foegele, and Brown picking it up. https://t.co/97ap2cZndh pic.twitter.com/Y09UY9EmPr
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).