Oilers head coach Todd McLellan talked about areas of improvement yesterday, focusing on the number of shots the team is currently allowing.

In my opinion we’re still giving up too many shots. It’s a catch-22. Because I’d like us to be a volume shooting team, which means you get some from bad angles, from really, non-scoring areas, but it keeps the other team on its toes. I think we’ve been giving up some of those perimeter shots. We’ve also been giving up a lot of shots on our penalty kill, which has to get better in certain areas. A lot of shot  attempts are from face off losses, which is an area of concern. So I think there are three or four areas that we can tighten up and bring that shot total down. (Source: Inside Sports, 630 CHED)

First, let’s verify McLellan’s claims.

If we look at all situations over the first seven games, the Oilers have allowed 61.28 shot attempts per hour, which is the fourth highest in the league only behind  Long Island, Columbus and Dallas (Source: Corsica Hockey). Of the 420 minutes they’ve played, they’ve played 47 minutes killing penalties, which is the 5th most in the league. And when it comes to shot attempts on the penalty kill, they have the sixth highest rate of shot attempts against. The Oilers are also 19th in the league when it comes to faceoffs in all situations.

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.