02/25/13 Road Trip Questions

The fabled nine game road trip began with an overtime loss on Monday night, and the Oilers are left with more questions than answers. Nuge snake-bitten? Yakupov with 9:05 of ice time? Khabibulin stealing the starting job? Where did I leave my keys?

02/11/13 Confidence Waning

A 14 shot effort on Sunday evening is something that the Oilers should not allow from themselves, but it's a symptom of a larger problem. Players that were shooting at the beginning of the season have stopped doing it. No really, it's bad.

02/05/13 NHL Standings By Shots On Goal

As of this writing the Oilers are sitting in 15th in the NHL's overall standings, but they are 22nd in another important category: Shots On Goal per Game. It's a decent indicator of how things will go in the long term. I'll show you how.

01/22/13 Time To Panic?

Allowing six goals in the first period is a good reminder how the Oilers amassed all this talent they've got. Now, if only they could stop doing that. Here's what the underlying numbers say:

08/04/12 The Truth About Shots On Goal

Evgeni Malkin led the NHL in shots for the 2011-12 season with 339 in total (4.52 per game). It turns out that getting a simple shot on goal is a very hard thing to do, and to expect even three per game from a player is a lofty goal. Here's why.

08/01/12 Rising: Ales Hemsky

Ales Hemsky's 2011-12 was so bad that it's hard to imagine that next season could be any worse. But there's also some actual evidence to suggest that we'll see a better Hemsky in 2012-13. Let's have a look-see.