It may have started off a little bit rough, but the Edmonton Oilers were able to defeat the Los Angeles Kings in six games. Now that they have moved on from the first round, they now will be facing the Vegas Golden Knights in the second round. For the Oilers this will be a tougher challenge for sure as the Golden Knights were the better team in the regular season, but as we know when it comes to the Playoffs, the regular season means nothing.
In this article I am going to be breaking down the defense between these two teams. For the Edmonton Oilers they're obviously missing one of their top guys in Mattias Ekholm, but they were still able to defeat the LA Kings. For their defense is 100% right now so they already have a slight advantage when it comes to that.
Unlike the Oilers, the Golden Knights are playing their defenseman more even ice time. Leading the Knight in average ice time is Noah Hanifin with 23:07 and the lowest amount is Nicolas Hague at 16:44. That is aa difference of 6: 23, this means that they have been giving their top guys more of a rest. The same cannot be said for the Oilers d-men.
Leading the Oilers defenseman in ice time is Evan Bouchard, who has averaged 25:43 a game while, Ty Emberson has averaged 10:45. That is a massive 14:58 difference. That means the Oilers top guys are eating way more ice time than their lower guys, which could lead to fatigue, just like what we saw with the LA Kings in the last series. Now I am sure if the Oilers had a healthy Ekholm this gap wouldn't be so big, but he is and it is effective everyone's ice time.
The main point of the defenseman is to keep the puck out of your own net and when it comes to last series the Golden Knights were better at it than the Oilers. In their 6-game series with the Minnesota Wild the Knights gave up 19 goals in 6 games for a GAA of 3.17. In the Oilers 6 games against the Kings, they gave up 24 goals for an average of 4 goals against. That is nearly one more goal given up by the Oilers per game. If the Oilers want to win this series, they will need to be better defensively and heading into the playoffs we knew that was going to be the case.
In this series between the Golden Knights and Oilers, I think that the Knights do have the advantage when it comes to playing defense. The fact that they spread out ice time better and have already proves to give up less goals, it clear that the Oilers will not be getting very many chances against, which means when they get them, they will need to capitalize. It's a good thing that the Oilers have better forwards then.