The Oilers’ 3 major problems, and 3 analytical solutions

Things are going from bad to worse in Edmonton, as they gave up a 2-goal lead to lose to the Winnipeg Jets in overtime Saturday Night.

3 Takeaways from Oilers’ disheartening overtime loss to Jets

A look into the Oilers' most demoralizing defeat yet, with the key loss potentially being one which will last longer than this one game versus the Jets.

Can analytics provide solutions?

The Oilers are slumping. They have the 2nd lowest PDO (proxy for “puck luck”) in the league, at 94.9%. This is in part due to a league-worst 86.8 SV% from their goaltending tandem. These stats serve to provide, at best, some hope that the team is simply experiencing the worst that “puck luck” has to offer, spearheaded by last night’s goaltending mishap as the Oilers looked to defend a 1 goal lead:

Yes, the Oilers were defending a one-goal lead, which is not a total surprise as the new defensive system, implemented by coaches Woodcroft and Manson, the system seeks to lower the goals against this team, which makes some sense for a team coming off a season as the NHL’s reigning goal-scoring leaders.

In fact, the Oilers did almost manage to close out the game, as the newly-minted second line of Janmark-Nuge-Foegele provided a solid statistical effort, posting 70 CF%, 90 xGF%, and 4 (!) rush attempts for to 0 against, per naturalstattrick.com. The formation of this line was made possible by Woodcroft as he broke up the highly successful Foegele-Nuge-Hyman line from Game 4 in Nashville, in order to achieve a few outcomes. He moved Hyman up the lineup, demoted Kane down the lineup, and tasked Janmark with picking up the slack on Nuge’s left wing.

This line was successful at outplaying the Jets on the night, but the line was not able to score a goal, which most likely would have changed the outcome of the game. A lack of 5v5 goals is an ongoing issue for the Oilers. Here are the 5v5 goals tabulated by game and line:

–          Game 1: 0 5v5 goals.

–          Game 2: Nuge-Drai Hyman – 1 goal.

–          Game 3: Foegele-Nuge-Hyman – 2 goals, Kane-McDavid-Drai – 1 goal.

–          Game 4: Hyman-McDavid-Drai – 1 goal.

When you consider how few 5v5 the Oilers have so far this season, breaking up the only line that has scored two goals 5v5 in Foegele-Nuge-Hyman, and doing so after 16 minutes together, just goes to show the extent of Jay Woodcroft’s line blender this season.

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That Nuge line only saw 7 minutes TOI 5v5 in game 4 in Philadelphia, yet posted the best stats out of all the top 6 lines iced that game, with 67 xGF% and 75 SCF%. This was impressive considering that the Oilers took a staggering 4-1 loss home with them that night. That came after they posted 2 GF and 59 xGF% in two periods of play before a poor 3rd period in Nashville in game 3, as per my previous article for Oil on Whyte.

Nonetheless, the Oilers versus Winnipeg in game 5 managed to protect a 1-goal lead for almost 25 minutes before the unfortunate turn of events at the end of the 2nd period. In three out of five games this season the Oilers have scored 2 or fewer goals; this is a far cry from what drove the Oilers’ high-octane comebacks and 3.96 goals-per-game-played last year.

This brings us to the three problems that plague the Oilers today. Hang on tight.