The Oilers season is 20% done – A deep dive into defence and goaltending

As the Oilers continue to be one of the worst defensive teams in the NHL this season, we break down where the blue line and goalies have been falling short.

The Oilers defense has taken a lot of heat this season – not undeservedly, and none more than offensive defenceman Evan Bouchard. Similarly, the goalies have received a lot of criticism, with fans still calling for a change, and Jack Campbell sinking in the AHL.

Read on to find out:

1.       Has the defence improved in the last eight games?

2.       How much of the failure is on the goaltending?

N.B. There is a TL;DR summarising each section if you just want to see the results.

Analysis 1: The defence over 16 games

Here are the definitions of stats which will be used in this section:

The entire team was getting PDO’d to start the season – ridiculously low on-ice SH%, terrible on-ice SV%, and therefore a low PDO that should eventually rise as the Oilers score some goals. This will only go as far as the shooting talent and injuries in the forward group allow for.

After 16 games, the defence has not totally bounced back. The only pairing that has seen an Earthly PDO is Darnell Nurse-Cody Ceci, which earned credit in the first handful of games for strong performances with good analytics. They were the top pair while Mattias Ekholm was still injured.

Through the first 16 games Ceci is also the only player to have a normal 1.005 PDO and an above-50% goal differential.

If you want, you can get a quick idea of their results just by looking at the colour-graded columns for GF%, xGF%, and PDO. However, we’ve also included “For” and “Against” data for reference.

The entire team has underperformed their xGF%, significantly. All D-men having xGF% in the range of ~55% is great, but many having GF% of 42% and lower is awful. The worst of this is the Brett Kulak-Vincent Desharnais pair, followed closely by Bouchard.

In 16 games, Bouchard had the worst GA/60, yet he had the second-best xGA/60 – this discrepancy is likely due to the quality of chances he gave up in the first eight games. In actual results, Bouchard had a middling GF%, but produced the highest xGF% and a scored point-per-game: 16 points in 16 games. He has been by far the best offence producer amongst the D-men.

Moreover, the rest of the defence’s PDO values will not remain at 0.950 and below forever, and they are likely to score more goals soon. Again looking at Bouchard, he has the third-lowest PDO, indicating he is, in effect, one of those players who is most due for pucks to bounce his way:

Bouchard saw normal PDO, SH%, and SV% values the last two seasons, but suddenly has a very low SV% behind him this year, and slightly lower On-Ice SH% from his teammates, resulting in a low PDO. He’s had lapses, but the goaltending has not been average behind him.

Analysis 3: The Goaltending

Here are the definitions of stats we will use in this section:

We’ve tabulated their results as a per-game and per-60 averages, with their ranks amongst NHL goalies that have played at least as many games as Campbell (five):

Both goalies have posted awful results so far. They’re 44th and 50th in the league for Goals Saved Above Expected. If we think of xGAA as how heavy of a workload the goalie has faced, Stuart Skinner faced the lighter workload.

This is not entirely a surprise since the Oilers’ defence has been better in the last eight games compared to the first eight, and Campbell has only had one start in November, and one win all season. Skinner has done quite well recently with the exception of the stinker versus Tampa Bay, and the Oilers need him to return closer to last season’s form ASAP.

How did the goalies fare against different types of chances? We tabulated their SV% against unblocked shot attempts of Low Danger, Medium Danger, and High Danger quality:

Again, both goalies were very bad across the board, but they gave up goals on high danger unblocked shot attempts at a higher rate than almost all NHL goalies. It’s safe to say they haven’t been bailing out their D-men at all this season. Campbell’s ability to save low-danger shots was effective, but not enough to salvage his league-worst performance against medium- and high-danger chances.

TL;DR – The goaltending

So, while we can say that the defence was bad but underperformed expected, the goaltending was worse. They performed terribly and were among the league’s worst goaltenders against medium- and high-danger unblocked shot attempts.

The Oilers almost certainly need to trade for a solution in net, and that solution has to be someone who can make Skinner a tandem goalie. Some will say he should be the 1B or backup until further notice.

Thanks for reading! For more data-based articles, follow me on X at @TheLineBlender and stay tuned to Oil On Whyte.