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

What next for the Oilers, as Jay Woodcroft went back to the line blender against the Predators to provide a spark, but then came up short in Philadelphia.

Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft blended the lines on Tuesday night, and Leon Draisaitl was spot-on in his thoughts of the Oilers’ newest second line, centered by Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. Speaking after the Oilers’ 6-1 win over the Predators, Draisaitl said:

There were many unknowns with the new lines heading into Tuesday’s game against Nashville. However, things worked out as the Oilers finally capitalized on their chances.

On Thursday night in Philadelphia, things went the other way completely, as Woodcroft went even further with his line blender. Read on for an in-depth analysis of the new lines I saw in these games – and what might be best moving forward for Game 5.

TL;DR available at the end of this article.

All stats are courtesy of NaturalStatTrick.com unless otherwise specified. The below contains explanations of stats you’ll see in this article:

Success at last with Nugent-Hopkins at centre

I’ll touch on most of the positives before many of the negatives. The best part about the forward lines was that they combined the known chemistry of Zach Hyman and Nugent-Hopkins, with the analytically strong winger duo of Hyman with Warren Foegele.

This created a viable option to keep Nugent-Hopkins afloat as the second line centre. Here are the analytics of these combinations from the 2022-23 regular season:

Not only did all these combinations of the three players control shot attempts while on the ice in Game 3, they were also able to dominate high danger shot attempts and expected goals across both games, with the exception of garbage time in Nashville. That’s impressive.

Note that the outlying PDO values were largely due to the quality of their own goaltending in relatively small samples. All arrows up on this speculative line combination, Woodcroft smartly put it to the test this week.

Important even strength game results from Game 3 in Nashville are tabulated by line combination below. Note, the very small sample size of TOI limits the conclusiveness of the results:

The score was good in Nashville, but the underlying numbers were generally poor due to a few factors. Most importantly, as Draisaitl noted, the Nugent-Hopkins line was the Oilers’ best at 5v5 in Nashville, delivering two goals and a majority of the shot attempts on-ice.

Note that their lack of HDCF resulted from them scoring from difficult areas with great puck movement and great shots. This masked the team’s unspectacular 5v5 play, as did Connor McDavid’s spectacular recovery and shot, delivering the stacked McDrai line’s only goal at 5v5:

The Predators were also pushing for chances for a majority of 5v5 play, as they found their deficit increase to four in the first period. The Oilers capitalized on their chances, and Jack Campbell was excellent on the night.

Some more context is needed – the Nugent-Hopkins line dominated the game against rhe Predators before garbage time. Through two periods, they were 100 GF%, 59 xGF%, scoring all the goals while on the ice and dominating play.

What’s more was their +13 xGF% Rel, placing them as the best Oilers line at 5v5 to that point in time. These stats are a nice continuation of last season’s sample.

The chemistry of Foegele-Hyman is beneficial in two ways. First, it provides the centreman Nugent-Hopkins with a winger pair that more consistently retrieves and cycles the puck in the offensive zone, which makes up for his unspectacular transition abilities.

Second, it allows Woodcroft to reunite McDrai, while keeping the struggling Evander Kane off the Nugent-Hopkins line and stapled to two dominant play-drivers (which doesn’t always work out in practice – more on this later). Note that the third line was also quietly good, well outplaying the competition with 57.6 xGF% and outshooting them with 67 SF%.

It’s going to be critical to the Oilers’ success that Nugent-Hopkins and Hyman continue to provide high expected goal shares as they did last year, along with good execution. The duo’s brilliant play 5v5 was reflected in their 64.5 and 63.2 xGF%.

Case in point on the chemistry of the Nugent-Hopkins line: Hyman’s retrieval ability, followed by the tenacious forecheck of Hyman-Foegele that pulled in the defenders, before they connected beautifully to Nugent-Hopkins for the finish:

They took it even further, with a second beautiful cycle to draw in the defenders, opening up the opportunity for a cross-slot pass that Foegele made no mistake burying from distance:

In Game 2 versus Vancouver, Nugent-Hopkins previously did the same thing, when he lured the goalie into thinking he would defer to McDrai on the flanks of the power play before sniping the puck far side. The finishing ability he’s developed is huge for the top 6. It makes it much harder for the goalie to simply cheat to Draisaitl’s circle, or for the opposition to swarm McDavid to prevent a dangerous scoring chance.

In Nashville, Draisaitl also made a creative play, when he quietly drifted from his usual office on the low circle into the slot to ensure Juuse Saros couldn’t just cheat over to stop him:

There was no such luck or creativity in Philadelphia on Thursday night. Although Mattias Ekholm made some good plays despite the loss, including this one where he quickly reversed and made a breakout pass instead of deferring to Evan Bouchard or waiting for both teams to set up off the line change:

These types of plays and goals put on display the creativity and positional timing that will be critical to keeping the Oilers at number one in goals scored in the NHL for the second season in a row, as teams work their hardest to stop their set plays, and those setups that they rely on most.

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).