12/13/15 Points: Can They Make It?

The Edmonton Oilers find themselves just two points out of a playoff spot on Sunday morning. Most fans are rightfully happy just to still be hanging around. But is it possible that the Oilers will actually make the playoffs this year? The short answer is yes, it's possible.

Let's take a quick examination of the numbers. Last year, Calgary locked up the last playoff spot in the west [grumble] with 97 points, and a record of 45-30-7. To reach 97 points this year, the Oilers would need a record of something like 30-13-9 over their last 52 games. That's a tall order (57.6% winning percentage) for any team, especially one that has won just 43.3% of the time so far. But things don't end there.

The Pacific Division is weak, which has allowed the Oilers to hang around. The third place team, Vancouver, currently has a worse W/L record than the Oilers. Hooray, loser point! They're also on pace for just 82 points - a significant drop off from Calgary's total last year. To better that record, the Oilers would need to finish 23-20-9 (or thereabouts). Moreover, twenty-one of the Oilers' last 52 games are against division rivals, including, critically, three each against San Jose and Calgary

Arizona, the second place team at the moment, is also just a .500 team and it has some real underlying trouble. And it's in the underlying numbers where we find that the division is wide open.

At 5x5, the LA Kings are running away with the league, nevermind the division, in Corsi For %. Anaheim also has good possession numbers, but they can't score (4.9% team shooting percentage, the lowest in the league). Over time that should even out, and Anaheim is still good enough to finish second in this bad division, but they won't make up the difference on LA. But that third spot is up in the air.

Arizona is pitiful in possession, 28th in the league in CF%. However, they're riding the best 5x5 shooting percentage in the NHL right now, and still they're just breaking even in the standings. What's more, they're minus-14 in GF/GA. When those hot hands stop filling the net, which they will, expect the Coyotes to sink like a stone.

Vancouver, meanwhile, is 24th in the league in CF% and their PDO (the best way we know to measure how lucky a team has been) suggests that the Canucks simply are what they appear to be. The underlying numbers don't seem to indicate that they're any worse than the team that has won 36.6% of the time so far, but they're probably not any better than that, either.

The three remaining teams, San Jose, Edmonton and Calgary, are 13th, 20th and 21st respectively in CF%, with almost no daylight between the Oilers and Flames.

So far, the Flames have enjoyed the sixth-highest 5x5 shooting percentage in the league, but they've been bad because they can't get a save. The Oilers' team shooting percentage is 12th-best and the Sharks' is 16th. All three teams are in the bottom four in 5x5 save percentage, with Calgary at the very bottom of the league.

If things remain relatively equal in net for the three teams, then offense will probably make the difference between who makes the playoffs and who doesn't. That is, of course, where Connor McDavid comes in, and it makes his injury even more unfortunate for the Oilers.

The positive side, on the other hand, is that McDavid will play again this season, just as the Oilers will need a boost in their scoring. The key will be to stay within striking distance of that final playoff spot until McDavid returns, and Anders Nilsson appears to have something to say about that. 

Nilsson is closing the gap of the Oilers' luck this year. Even with his recent performances, this team is near the bottom of the league in save percentage at even strength. If he can keep this going and pull the team to a respectable average, it may be the Oilers and not the Flames who zero in on the Sharks for that final playoff spot.

We've seen that things don't always follow the numbers perfectly in practice, but the picture they're painting is of a mediocre Oilers team in a very bad division. That may be enough.

11/29/15 Odds & Ends: Predictions, Trade Talk, Goaltending

Fun fact: the Edmonton Oilers are tied in the standings with the Calgary Flames. Except the Oilers have a minus-12 goal differential, compared to Calgary's minus-31 (which is the worst in the league).

11/1/15 October Revisited

I paid money to go to the Halloween game. I even got the wife into my old Oilers jersey from the '06 run. We were so cute it was horrifying; truly a deep Halloween costume. I was feeling a comeback there, but it didn't go well. Neither did October. Let's review.

10/26/15 A Nail Yakupov Revival

Nail Yakupov is off to a very fast start. His best ever, as a matter of fact,

09/12/15 Forecasting the Oilers' 2015-16

I know we're almost into training camp already but I wanted to reserve judgement on the Oilers' off season until it seemed that all the moves had been made. Here are some final thoughts and predictions on a number of items.

1) Will The Oilers Make The Playoffs?

There are a wide range of predictions when it comes to the Oilers' finish this year. Connor McDavid changed the perception of the team in a big way, but let's not put the cart before the horse. Of the eight Western Conference playoff teams last year, I could see the Oilers jumping ahead of only Calgary and Vancouver. Unfortunately, they still have to contend with Los Angeles, Dallas, Colorado and San Jose. The Oilers were 27 points behind the worst of those teams last year (SJS), so when the music stops I don't see them having a chair. Put another way, a 30 point improvement to 92 points would still only have been good for tenth place last year. It's a huge leap to get all the way to the post season.

2) How Did Peter Chiarelli Do?

Connor McDavid doesn't count when it comes to evaluating front office performance this off season, because it was a no-brainer pick that the Oilers got for being incompetent. However, Chiarelli did some nice things in my mind. He identified an available goaltender who was probably the best bet to become a starter and didn't overpay for him. He was in on Dougie Hamilton but didn't overpay for him, and those two things somewhat offset his overpayment for Griffin Reinhart. Reinhart is just slightly too young to be what the Oilers really needed, but he fits the age range. Even if he tops out as a #3 it's a good addition, especially because this team will be so top-heavy in salaries up front. Even if you lack a true number one, you can win with a bunch of twos and threes. I like the addition of Sekera too, of course, but he only replaces Petry. That's not a knock on Chiarelli though, because when you take over from incompetent people you need to start by undoing what they have done. Adding Sekera seemed to be the start of that.

3) How Many Points Will McDavid Get?

Here's another one with a wide range of theories. McDavid may be a Crosby-like talent or better, but scoring is down in the NHL and the Oilers haven't exactly set the world on fire offensively of late. There was a pretty large spike in power play opportunities and goals per game across the league in Crosby's rookie reason, due in large part to rule changes. Both numbers have since dropped off. Even more interesting, league average save percentage in 2005-06 was just 0.901 and has gradually risen to 0.915 last year. The Penguins scored 243 goals in Crosby's rookie season, which was 18th in the league. Last year, the highest scoring team was Tampa Bay with 259 goals. The Oilers had just 193.

Crosby was involved in 42% of Penguins goals in 2005-06, but he also played over 200 minutes more than the next-highest forward on his team, and almost 500 more minutes than the fourth-highest forward. We know that the distribution of ice time will be different in Edmonton because of the number of weapons the Oilers have. I'm going to be somewhat generous and assume the Oilers will jump to 220 GF, even though league average scoring has been stable for the last four years. Let's also assume that McDavid will get plenty of opportunity, while acknowledging the other players that will need to get ice time. Could McDavid be involved in as much as 30% of Oilers goals? In this scenario McDavid would finish with around 66 points. I'm guessing that's the range we should expect.

4) How Many Games Will Darnell Nurse Play?

The Edmonton Oilers have been one of the NHL's most injured teams since the 2009-10 season. If that trend continues, and we have no reason to believe that it won't, then it won't be long before the Oilers are forced to use all the best players they have. Even if Nurse doesn't make the team out of camp, I'd say he'll be in the lineup before November ends and there's a good chance he'll stick after that. I'm going to guess that he gets into 60 games and is among the league's top ten rookies.

5) How Many Games Will The Oilers Win?

Last year the Oilers won their tenth game on January 9th, 42 games into the season. They lost 20 of 21 games from November 11th to December 27th. That's a quarter of the season with one win. If they can simply avoid going sideways for an extended period, as they have been prone to since 2009-10, they should be able to eke out a few more wins. The new coaching staff is going to make a big difference here. Even though the players would say otherwise in public, they seemed to tune out Dallas Eakins' tyrannical regime in a hurry. Also, the players aren't fools. They must have known the dysfunctional way that the team was being run. Change and stability will go a long way in not letting a few losses break them down mentally. Much will hinge on the goaltending as well. If everything breaks right, I could see 35-38 wins being realistic. 

06/26/15 It Won't Go Down

Crass? Maybe. True? Don't you lie.

05/10/15 Learning To Love Again

Optimism is a foreign feeling for Oilers fans. It's certainly strange for me. It's a bit hard to believe now but this blog started out with a very optimistic view of things in Oilerland, and slowly transitioned to bitter cynicism. I have to admit that emotionally I'm having trouble figuring out where to go from here.

McDavid is heaven sent, of course, but I think getting MacTavish out of the driver's seat will be more important in the long run. I respect Craig MacTavish, just like everybody else, but seeing him removed along with Kevin Lowe felt like... well, it felt like this:

But then we got word that MacTavish is going to be number two under Chiarelli, and we still haven't heard anything about Scott Howson. On one level this makes perfect sense. Being an outsider, Peter Chiarelli is tasked with figuring out the Oilers' entire organization while going into a very important draft and off season. Firing the people who have key information wouldn't make sense.

Oilers fans know all that on an intellectual level, but there's still that nagging bug in our ears that says: MacTavish is still part of the decision-making process, and Lowe wasn't fired, he was shuffled around again.

It's going to take action from Chiarelli to silence the doubt -- actions like seeing Justin Schultz for what he is, getting rid of Ference and Nikitin, and hanging on to good but unpopular players. We won't get all the answers we need right away. However, each move that shows a departure from the old ways will make the entire hockey world feel better.

I wish things hadn't played out this way, because all the very good things that are happening feel just a little tainted. I suppose when the general manager being demoted is a good thing, there are bound to be mixed emotions. Oilers fans were writing open letters that sounded like breakup notes, which is a measure of the commitment we all feel. It's a silly cliche to care this much about a hockey team, but we do. Hunkering down in a warm place to watch an Oilers game instills a strong sense of community, especially when the games matter. If not for hockey, what on earth would you look forward to in November? Or January?

It's been a long time, but I remember freezing my butt off fortyish times a year to watch the Oilers play. I remember the sweet relief of reaching the entrance to the arena and the warmth of the foyer after walking from the car. I remember the couple we sat next to every game. It's as vivid as if it happened yesterday. Canadian hockey fandom is a meme, but it's impossible to overstate the connection it creates. Rememeber how everyone was your best friend in 2006?

And it's precisely that attachment we feel that makes it hard to trust again. Even if it's not Mike Babcock, the Oilers are probably on the verge of getting a great new coach, they have a winning and experienced GM, and Connor-freaking-McDavid. So why don't things feel like they're going to be okay? I want them to be. But we'll see.

04/21/15 Bottoms Up: The Kool-Aid Kid

OH YEAH!

04/15/15 The Myth of the Nelson Turnaround & Other Thoughts

Remember 2007-08, when the Oilers brought in the kids of the first rebuild, started 27-30-5, and then finished 14-5-1 in their last twenty games? Ah, the hopes we had then. We Oilers fans have been fooled by late-season improvements more times than I care to remember, and it's happening again.

02/03/15 Odds & Ends: Six Dead Horses Get A Beating

Here are six more topics you've read about before, but (hopefully) from a different viewpoint.

I have to start with Dallas Eakins because of his recent interview. There's a lot of backlash about the fact that Eakins didn't take any ownership for the complete disaster that was his tenure with the Oilers. Fair enough, I thought the guy was doing a bad enough job to deserve to be fired so he deserves some of the blame in my view. But there's one problem with that: he doesn't have a job anymore, and the people who hired him do.

I'm not going to say Eakins deserved more time - he struck me as a bit of a tyrant and I think that's showing with the body language of the team - but if you were hoping to land another job some day would you appear on the radio and go: "well, I completely screwed up a team that was ready to take the next step"?

Or would you say something like: "I thought I'd have more to work with"?

On Enforcers

I've been thinking about Luke Gazdic lately, and enforcers in general, and something came to mind: if you've built a team that needs Luke Gazdic to defend it, then you've built the team wrong. No offense to Gazdic the person, but if he's got a spot on an NHL team it's because it's a weak team.

On winning NHL rosters, every player serves a purpose; each man has some use in helping the team play better hockey. The idea behind an enforcer is that he allows other players to free-wheel around the ice without fear of getting hurt or intimidated, which is a fundamentally flawed rationale when it comes to team building. If the other eleven forwards can't function properly without an enforcer to protect them, then they can't function properly. That's why the enforcer is going the way of the dinosaur.

An OEL Trade??

I've been reading about Oliver Ekman-Larsson perhaps being available. There's no way that's true, unless all the knocks to the head Don Maloney took as a player are finally coming home to roost. There might have been a time when an aggressive and smart team could have acquired OEL, but that time has passed. If it was somehow possible, I'd throw Eberle and the 2015 first round pick out there. That pick isn't likely to be first overall, but it would give Arizona a chance at two picks in the top five or so. Huge value for a rebuilding organization, plus a proven scorer with term and youth enough to be valuable to a rebuild.

When the Oilers' rebuild began, we all knew that there would be casualties if it meant building a balanced team. That time has come. But Ekman-Larsson isn't going anywhere.

Draft Position and Expectations

Being drafted first overall is a funny thing, because it's relative to the other players that are available. Would Yakupov have gone first overall in a draft that included Taylor Hall? Nathan MacKinnon? John Tavares? There's no way to know for sure, but it brings some interesting perspective to mind. Imagine that Yakupov was drafted third overall relative to his class, like Leon Draisaitl.

Draisaitl played 37 games for the Oilers right out of the draft, and had nine points. No big deal - he was a third overall pick, not ready for the NHL and everyone said so. Back to Junior he goes. Would Yakupov have benefitted from a demotion earlier in his career?

Draft position doesn't say as much about a player as we sometimes think. There was an automatic feeling that Yakupov would be in the NHL right out of the draft because the previous two first overall picks did it. I won't criticize the Oilers too harshly for falling into this trap, because I thought he could play in the NHL right away too. What's more, Yakupov had 9-11-20 in his first 37 games, which is over double Draisaitl's total. But Yakupov was far from a complete player when he was drafted, and unfortunately now he has to learn to be one in the world's best league.

Hidden Asset Value

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the Oilers keep getting the results of a rebuilding team because they keep behaving like a rebuilding team. That's why you don't trade a player like Boyd Gordon, or even David Perron.

Money aside, the bottom line of sports is something called "winning". Asset management doesn't just come down to what you can get for player X. In Perron's case, there's some truth to the notion that the Oilers wouldn't want to re-sign him for more money, but how do you assign value to him helping the team get closer to making the playoffs next year? I'm not suggesting that Perron is the difference between making the playoffs and not making them, but he certainly helps next year. And if the Oilers are still sellers at next year's deadline, could they still get a second round pick for Perron? I think so, especially if the rest of the team were to be improved next year.

Boyd Gordon is similar. There's value for the Oilers in showing the rest of the league that they're not just going to continue a cycle of rebuilding. That's why UFAs and players with NMCs and NTCs won't come here.

When it comes to the Oilers, you have to talk in terms of what they should do and in terms of what you think they will do. They should hang on to good players like Gordon and Perron and Petry for next year, improve the team around them, and push hard for the playoffs. What they will do is maximize the value they can get for these players because they've accepted that they're still not going to be good enough next year. There's a clear divide there, but the latter course of action is why the team keeps failing to improve. Dennis King had a good line on the Monday morning Lowdown with Lowetide, saying (I'm paraphrasing here) that the Oilers don't have enough ingredients to make anything good for dinner, so they might as well throw out the bread too.

Oh, and do you remember when the Oilers decided to trade Kyle Brodziak? They spent the next several years trying to replace him, with more than one failed attempt. Let's not do it again with Gordon.

Roster Whac-A-Mole

Matt Hendricks is another player I would hang on to. It's hard not to like the guy, especially with the season he's having. His situation reminds me of Nick Schultz, though: I like the player but not the cost to acquire him. Devan Dubnyk is reviving his career, both on a poor team in Arizona and a good team in Minnesota. MacTavish's words that "if you have to ask the question, then you know the answer" are now infamous, but I don't see how they're any less true about Scrivens and Fasth than they were about Dubnyk.

I'm borrowing a term from Bruce McCurdy here, but the Oilers continue to play Roster Whac-A-Mole by filling one hole and opening another. That's inevitable when you build a team, but the problem is that the Oilers have traded a center and a goalie for two wingers (Gagner and Dubnyk for Purcell and Hendricks). MacTavish said he doesn't want to fill holes at the expense of opening others (link), and yet that's precisely what he has done.

MacTavish's moves aren't so bad individually, but when it comes to team building they're ugly. He strengthened the wing by weakening the all-important center and goalie positions, and then weakened the wing by trading Perron for a pick.

It goes back further, too. MacTavish strengthened the team's cap position by trading Horcoff, which weakened the center position (I know people will say Gordon replaced Horcoff, but then who replaced Belanger's role?).

The Oilers are strong on the wing and weak everywhere else, which is why they should be trading wingers out, not bringing more in at the expense of other positions.

01/16/15 Don't Trade Taylor Hall

I can't believe we're even talking about this, but it would be insane to trade Taylor Hall.

Admittedly, Hall is having a bad season by his standards, just like everyone else on the team. Half a decade of losing probably hasn't helped in that regard. But let's get down to the nuts and bolts of why you don't trade a player like Hall.

Here are Hall's even strength points per hour since he entered the NHL. His league ranking in brackets is based on all NHL forwards who played at least 30 games.

2014-15: 2.02 (81st)

2013-14: 2.91 (4th)

2012-13: 3.15 (6th)

2011-12: 2.07 (77th)

2010-11: 1.78 (158th)

Something's off this season (maybe a few things), but over the last two years Hall is one of the most elite point-producing forwards in the league. Even at his worst, as a rookie fresh out of the draft on a last place team, he was producing like a very good second line player.

Now let's look at his possession numbers. Corsi needs context, so below I've shown Hall's rank anong Oilers forwards (20 games played) in relative Corsi since he entered the league.

2014-15: 1st

2013-14: 6th

2012-13: 2nd

2011-12: 1st

2010-11: 1st

This is a bit crude, but it certainly shows how it's Hall who is driving the play for the Oilers. He's most often their best forward in terms of possession, except for last year when he led the team in scoring with 80 points in 75 games. 

That offensive total last year is 1.07 points per game. Guess how many times a player has scored at least 1.05 points per game (45 games played) since 2005-06?

127. That's under 13 players per season on average.

I heard Paul Almeida on Lowetide's show today make a hilarious but sadly probable comment. What if the Oilers trade Hall for a top-six forward with some grit and a top-four defenseman? With another couple of pieces that's a good return, right? Except that the Oilers are about to lose Petry (top-four defenseman) and have already traded Perron (forward, grit)!

I hope the Oilers aren't stupid enough to trade Hall, but they keep reaching new levels of stupidity, so who knows.

01/13/15 Odds & Ends: More On Yakupov, Trading Gordon, Trading Marincin, Voracek's Year & More

A busy brain is the readers' gain! Here are eight more thoughts on the Oilers and around the NHL.

I'll start by officially throwing my hat into the "don't trade Boyd Gordon" ring. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush. Boyd Gordon is completely irreplaceable for the Oilers, because there's nobody in the organization who can do his job. It's as simple as that, because a trade or free agent signing to replace a player under contract for another year would make no sense at all.

Gordon being on the wrong side of thirty may worry some, but it shouldn't. The goal for the Oilers has to be winning next year, and Gordon's age shouldn't prevent him from helping the team do that in the short term. If the Oilers are somehow able to turn the corner, they should be thinking about re-signing Gordon at this time next year, not trading him.

Among NHL centers who have played at least 30 games, Gordon has the fourth-toughest zone start workload in the league. He's starting in the offensive zone just 18.7% of the time at even strength. Dominic Moore has it the fifth-toughest, at 26.1%. Gordon is also facing the toughest competition among the Oilers' regular forwards.

He's totally irreplaceable, really by any means, and if the Oilers trade him they will just spend the next several years trying to find another Boyd Gordon.

Yakupov's Struggles

In my previous article about Nail Yakupov's struggle to find offense, I forgot to mention that his personal on-ice shooting percentage at even strength has dropped from 11.11% to 7.37% to 5.69% over his first three seasons. That last number especially is low, and his 957 PDO suggests a player who has been quite unlucky this year. As we know, these things tend to turn around.

Don't let his mistakes trouble you too much, and the Oilers shouldn't focus on them too much either. This kid had 170 points in 107 OHL games, but he finished his junior career with a modest plus-13 rating. In his first year in Sarnia he was a minus-2(!) with 49-52-101 in 65 games. The Oilers had to know the player they were getting. I've said this before, but if they want to maximize his value they need to put him with some defensively sound forwards (like Derek Roy has been for him), and just let that horse run. Trying to turn him into something he's not is a recipe for the failure we've seen so far.

Signing Derek Roy

I've liked Derek Roy just as much as the next guy since he came to Edmonton, and even wished the Oilers had signed this player in the off season rather than rushing Leon. But let's just wait and see before anybody jumps to re-sign the guy. I don't think Roy's phone is going to be ringing off the hook in the off season, and it's not like signing him to an extension right now is going to avoid the frenzy.

Small sample size is so deceptive with players. Remember how good Corey Potter looked early in his first season with the Oilers, and how poor he looked after he signed his extension? We need more games before making a call on Roy, and that goes for Klinkhammer as well.

Voracek Makes Howson Look Silly

Jakub Voracek is having one hell of a year in Philadelphia. With 17-35-52 in 43 games, he's leading the league as of this writing. Remember when Scott Howson traded him along with a pick that became Sean Couturier and another pick that became Nick Cousins? Jeff Carter played 39 games for Columbus, scoring 15 goals. Voracek has already got 80 goals and counting for Philadelphia, not to mention Couturier's work. I understand why the move was made, but trying to have a goal-scoring center play with Rick Nash always seemed strange to me.

Anyway, that's Scott Howson for ya - our very own Senior VP of Hockey Operations.

Oh, and Voracek is making the Oilers look foolish in another way: he was picked one spot after Sam Gagner. I remain a Gagner fan, and I won't blame anyone for picking him over Voracek at the time, but if the Oilers flipped a coin at the draft they came out on the wrong end. Such has been their decade.

Fixing The Shootout

There's still debate about the way the shootout points system should be handled, even after all this time. I don't expect that the NHL would care what I think (I don't expect you to care either, but I'll tell you anyway!), but a few years ago I had an idea that might work:

Award two points for a regulation or overtime win.

Award one point for an overtime loss.

Award one point for a shootout win, and no points for a shootout loss.

Why?

Both teams lose something if the game goes to a shootout, which makes them more likely to try to end the game in regulation, especially in a playoff race. Teams still get something for winning the shootout, leaving its relevance intact. This way the NHL would not have to revamp the points system entirely by introducing three points for a regulation win.

Trading Martin Marincin

This is a player whose name has been in trade discussions for a while, even before he played an NHL game, and all the reasons that made it plausible then are still true now.

No player is untouchable, depending on the return, and if trading Marincin is the right thing to do then it is. The problem I have with it is that this is a player the Oilers drafted outside of the first round, and who has actually given them a return on their investment. He's inexpensive useful depth and unknown, mostly untapped potential at this point. I wouldn't be in any rush to move him unless it was part of a very significant upgrade to the here and now.

The Tank Must End

I won't say that it's wrong for Oilers fans to cheer for losses and Connor McDavid, because if this blog had existed in 2009 you would have found a bunch of articles about the virtues of a Fall For Hall.

From December 3rd, 2009 to December 11th, 2009 the Oilers won five straight games on the road - and barely moved in the standings. It was then that I first felt that tanking for the future was the only way forward. The Oilers might have felt that way, too, because the team went on to win only one of their next 21 games, including zero in the month of January. We can certainly debate the wisdom of my thinking, and the wisdom of the men at the controls, but it did award the Oilers one of the best players in their history.

Having said that, I do think that it's time for the tanking mentality to end, McDavid or no McDavid. Rather than selling players off and hoping to lose, it'd be nice to see the Oilers try to win and convince them to stay. Maybe they'll convince others.

Which brings me to:

The Jeff Petry Conundrum

If it is Jeff Petry who wants out, and not Oilers management that wants to be rid of Petry, then the organization is in a tight spot. However, that doesn't mean that it's not management's fault. As Ryan Batty pointed out, saying that a player didn't want to stay is often just another way of saying that the team isn't worth playing for or caring about. That's on the people running the show.

But they can redeem themselves. It would be a mistake to simply trade Petry, as others have already stated in greater detail. Read this, or maybe this one, or even this! This guy has got to come back if the Oilers hope to compete next season.

So because the Oilers can't offer Petry a winning team, they'd better offer him money. A lot of money. It could be that money and winning wouldn't be enough - maybe he wants to play closer to home, like in Detroit - and if that's the case I hope we hear about it after he's gone. But my sincere hope is that we don't hear that Petry left Edmonton because of dollars.

Nikita Nikitin has never shown as much as Petry, he's not a former draft pick of the team (although they gave one up to acquire his rights), and he got $4.5 million to be very sub-par. Is $5 million outrageous for Petry? I don't think so, especially on a shorter-term deal.

01/11/15 The Problem With Nail Yakupov

Let me start by saying that this isn't going to be another article about how bad Nail Yakupov has been. Because he's a former first overall pick I never thought I'd be in this position, but this is a player that I'm really rooting for to find success. His strong game and two points against Chicago were a tall drink of water in an otherwise dry and cracked desert of a season.

But I am also interested in finding out what might be going wrong with his performance overall. Stats alone can't illustrate the problem, although I've pored over them and I'll show you what I've found. I've decided to take two approaches: the tangible statistical side, and the intangible mental side. Hopefully, we'll be able to better understand the problems with the player and how best to correct them. After all, this is a guy who scored 80 goals in 107 OHL games, not Patrik Stefan who had 16 goals 58 games in the now-defunct IHL.

The Many Numbers Involved

Okay, so for all the stats nerds like me there are some interesting things to learn about Yakupov's career, but even if you don't normally give a damn about the numbers it's interesting to see what's going on from that angle. For context on the whole thing, let's see how Yakupov has produced:

Yakupov's Point Production (Per 60 Minutes)

YEAR	EVEN STRENGTH	POWERPLAY	SHORTHANDED
2012-13	2.20	4.20	0
2013-14	1.43	2.63	0
2014-15	0.73	2.18	0

It's pretty clear that we're looking at a decline in production each season, which is nothing we don't already know. At first glance it appears that his powerplay production is the culprit, but his even strength Points/60 has actually dropped more. The question is: why?

Yakupov's Most Common 5x5 Forward Linemates By Season

2012-13	Sam Gagner	Magnus Paajarvi	Ales Hemsky
2013-14	Sam Gagner	Ryan Nugent-Hopkins	Jordan Eberle
2014-15	Mark Arcobello	Leon Draisaitl	David Perron

In each year, Yakupov played the most 5x5 minutes with the player on the left. Those saying that Yakupov hasn't had a fair shake in terms of linemates are correct this season. The quality of his forward linemates has plummeted this year; David Perron is a distant third behind Draisaitl. But what of 2013-14? The two best centers available and Jordan Eberle as linemates. A sophomore slump, perhaps?
Yakupov's Most Common 5x4 Forward Linemates By Season

2012-13	Sam Gagner	Jordan Eberle	Magnus Paajarvi
2013-14	Ales Hemsky	Sam Gagner	David Perron
2014-15	Leon Draisaitl	David Perron	Teddy Purcell

It's a similar story to the even strength linemates. Yakupov got some good linemates last season but has had a major drop off this year. The powerplay is clicking at just 13.7% this year, which is a drop from 17% last year and 20.1% the year before that.
Oilers Goals For By Year, and Yakupov's Contributions

YEAR	OILERS' GOALS PER GAME	% OF GOALS YAKUPOV CONTRIBUTED TO
2012-13	2.56	25%
2013-14	2.43	12%
2014-15	2.24	11.7%

What we see here is that as a team the Oilers are scoring less per game in each of the last three years. Yakupov's contribution was hugely inflated in his rookie season, but has remained constant in the last two. Part of the problem is that the team simply isn't scoring as much. Why is that?
Oilers' Team Shooting Percentage By Year (All Situations)

YEAR	TEAM SHOOTING PERCENTAGE	TEAM SHOTS PER GAME
2012-13	9.57	26.8
2013-14	9.01	26.9
2014-15	8.09	27.6

As a team the Oilers' shooting percentage has dropped by a percent and a half since Yakupov was a rookie, even though they're shooting a bit more each game. The Oilers have been unlucky in scoring lately (as if we didn't know that already), so that's part of the reason that the production of every player is down, including Yakupov.
Yakupov's ice time has remained fairly constant in each season at about fourteen and a half minutes, which is actually quite strange given that he's a first overall pick in his third season. As a point of comparison, fellow winger Taylor Hall averaged over eighteen minutes per game in his rookie year, and was up to almost nineteen minutes by his third year.
I'm prepared to say that Yakupov was in a bit of a sophomore slump in his second year, because his linemates improved and he did not. But might there be a reason for that?
Confidence   The picture at the top of this page is of a player that Oilers fans likely do not recognize. Remember how excited Yakupov used to be when he scored a goal? When is the last time you saw an Oilers player so thrilled to score? That's gone now.
At the time of his fantastic game-tying goal against the Kings, and his slide down the ice in celebration, Shawn Horcoff said of Yakupov:
"He just loves the game. He's got a youthful exuberance about him. He just loves to play and he just loves to score goals."
How dare a hockey player show how much he enjoys scoring goals? The world of the NHL certainly didn't like it. A truly ridiculous amount of controversy sprang up, and Yakupov learned that it's not appropriate to enjoy scoring that much.
And then his confidence took another hit.
Dallas Eakins and Nail Yakupov certainly had their differences early on, with the former first overall pick scratched more than once in his second year, breaking 18 minutes of ice time in a game only four times, and at one point he played just over 31 minutes over FOUR GAMES. By November, Yakupov's agent, Igor Larionov, was publicly demanding answers from the Oilers about how his client was being used, and even said if the Oilers aren't happy with Yakupov they'd be open to a trade.
Yes, Eakins and Yak had a rocky start.
Eakins admitted on leaving town that he got ahead of himself system-wise. He demanded more of his group than they were capable of when he got them, which led to spectacular failure. And he certainly seemed to demand more from Nail Yakupov.
Except Yakupov was never projected to be an all-around talent. There's nothing wrong with learning some defensive responsibility, but unfortunately the fixation on what Yak was always doing wrong seems to have sapped his confidence in what he was doing right.
Fans are a little spoiled in Edmonton by Hall and Nugent-Hopkins, two rare talents that we ready to star right out of the box. Those two are the exception, not the rule. Forget where Yakupov was drafted for a moment and consider that most prospects need time to mature. They need to be allowed to fail at certain things and have the coach put them out again anyway. Yakupov hasn't had that luxury. For a year and a half he's been taught that he can't be trusted in situations that matter, like late in a game when he tied it up against Los Angeles as a rookie, or in overtime or the shootout.
The team's scoring has declined as a whole, and Yakupov has dipped along with it. He's a different player than the excited young man who first came into the NHL - not only is his confidence shot, but it seems that his joy in the game has diminished as well. Losing 2/3 of the time probably hasn't helped in that regard, and the lack of scoring hurts too.
I have to say I find it funny when people call Yakupov a bust after 150 games or so from a kid who just turned 21 in October. I can scarcely imagine a worse situation for him to start his career. It would be a mistake to give up on him now.

01/07/15 The Detroit Model

If (when?) the Detroit Red Wings make the playoffs this season, it'll lengthen their streak to twenty-four years. Every team in the NHL would love to follow their example, and so should the Oilers.

The guy in the picture above is Tomas Tatar, who the Red Wings drafted in the second round of the 2009 draft (the Paajarvi/Lander draft) and who didn't see regular NHL action until last year. He played most of four seasons for Detroit's AHL affiliate, the Grand Rapids Griffins, for a total of 265 AHL games. He didn't finally stick in the NHL until the Red Wings would have had to lose him on waivers if they tried to send him down.

But even then it wasn't a home run that Tatar would make the team, as the Red Wings had a bunch of extra forwards at training camp and demanded that their young prospect outplay them.

Compare that approach to the Oilers, who have made the playoffs in nine out of the 24 seasons (including this one) since Detroit last missed.

Compare Tatar to Anton Lander, who was a full-time NHLer two years before Tatar and has since gone on to play most of two seasons in Oklahoma City. Lander played two seasons in Sweden after being drafted, which was fine for him, but that didn't teach him much about playing in the NHL in 2011-12. Now it appears that Lander has to make it work with the Oilers, or they'll walk away. Meanwhile, Tatar is just starting a promising career.

Detroit's Roster

Twenty-three players have suited up for the Red Wings this season, sixteen of which were drafted by that team*. Fourteen of those have played at least forty games in a single NHL season, and those players averaged four years from the draft to their first 40-game season.

A big part of that is where the Red Wings draft, of course. When you're always making your picks deeper in the draft, you don't typically get players that can step directly into the NHL.

But Tomas Tatar is a fine example of how Detroit fundamentally develops their youth. Tatar had 23-26-49 in 61 AHL games in 2012-13, and another 4-3-7 in 18 games with the big club. He was probably ready to test the waters of the NHL that year, but the Red Wings gave him another in the minors and then still didn't hand him a job the following season.

The Pipeline

Detroit has been lucky with players like Lidstrom and Zetterberg and Datsyuk, but they have also done the right thing with the draft. Largely out of necessity, the Red Wings don't look to the draft for immediate help - they seem to always have an eye to the distant future. That has created a pipeline of NHL calibre players on the farm, just waiting for the call.

But it's not just luck and drafting that has created competition. Tatar was competing against Dan Cleary for his spot in 2013-14, a veteran player who the Wings re-signed to give themselves some insurance. By contrast, the Oilers are willing to draft a young player and not only guarantee him a roster spot, but also give themselves little or no insurance at the position.

The Weather

Players want to go to Detroit because that's where you have a chance to win. Marian Hossa signed there even though the Oilers offered him some $80 million. Daniel Alfredsson chose Detroit to sign with when he finally left Ottawa.

Edmonton averages 48.6 inches of snow per year, and Detroit averages 42.7 inches. Edmonton's cold season starts on November 20th and lasts until March 7th, with an average high of -6 degrees Celsius. Detroit's cold season starts on November 30th and lasts until March 3rd, with an average high of -1 degree Celsius. Detroit's recent decline has been well documented (see photos).

But players want to go there. Because they win. They've been winning forever.

Please, Oilers. Follow their lead.

* - Seventeen if you count Kyle Quincey, who found his way back to Detroit after being drafted by that team. Andrej Nestrasil is also counted above, but is no longer on the team.

01/05/15 The Downfall Of David Perron

What happened to David Perron's production this season, and did it contribute to his being sent out of town?

01/04/15 Three Ways Draisaitl Was Mishandled

Remember that old saying "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all"? If we in the blogs followed that mantra when it comes to the Edmonton Oilers, things would be pretty quiet.

01/03/15 Odds & Ends: Perron Trade, Petry Trade, Dubnyk, Centers

Four more thoughts that you might find interesting.

01/02/15 I Hate This Trade So Much

It's Groundhog Day in Edmonton! Trading actual NHL players for futures has become something of a tradition 'round these parts, and the Oilers didn't disappoint the fans! David Perron is laughing all the way to Pittsburgh.

The trade is fine if you look at it in a vacuum. A winger with five goals for a first round pick and a utility player sounds like a clear win for Edmonton. Looking at trades in this way has gotten the Oilers all the way to 30th in the standings. They just keep doing the things that got them here. I feel like my head is going to explode.

The one thing MacTavish had going for him was acquiring David Perron. There's no possible way to defend this man's leadership, or anyone in management any more.

A first round pick may be ready to make an impact just in time for the expiration of the value contracts of Hall and Eberle. Think about that.

And Klinkhammer? Another bottom-six player at best, which makes him mostly irrelevant. He's a UFA after this season, which makes him completely irrelevant.

If David Perron was an asset that the organization was willing to move, why not do it in the summer when the guy was coming off his best season ever? Wouldn't it have made more sense to trade a valuable winger for some help up the middle, especially after signing another left-winger in Benoit Pouliot? Isn't that how you build a properly balanced roster?

But no.

We continue to watch as they rebuild the rebuild. What you're watching is one of the worst organizations in professional sports - quite possibly the worst. It takes a special kind of idiocy to stay at the bottom for this long with this many talented players already in the fold.

The Oilers didn't get any closer to competing next year, they got further away. When Petry goes, they'll be even further. But just keep doing what you're doing, Oilers. It's worked out so well thus far.