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.