The Edmonton Oilers are heading into the 2024/25 regular season with a lot more uncertainty than previous years, especially on defence. Ceci, Desharnais and Broberg are out, and it remains to be seen what roles Emberson, Stecher, J. Brown and other AHL defencemen can potentially fill. The Oilers don’t currently have a lot of cap flexibility to make any enhancements, so they really need to get as much as possible from what they have.

Lowetide had an interesting post about Mark Giordano and why he might be a good candidate to bring into Oilers training camp on a professional tryout deal. Giordano is nearing the end of a long career where he’s played 1,148 regular season games and 41 playoff games. And if he wants to stay in the national league and get that elusive cup ring, he’ll have to compete for a depth role on a team with championship aspirations.

To figure out if Giordano would be a good fit for Edmonton, I wanted to know three things: (1) what his usage has been like in the late stages of his career, (2) what his on-ice numbers have been like and (3) if he can fill a gap that’s on the Oilers penalty kill.

(1) Usage

For most of his career, Giordano was considered a top pairing defencemen who spent a lot of time playing against the other team’s best players. But like most players, his usage has gradually declined as he’s aged. Last season in Toronto, he posted his lowest rate of minutes per game (16:37) and he finished sixth on the team in overall minutes. The table below shows Giordano’s career numbers, and includes his age and the team he was with.

We’ve also seen that since arriving in Seattle through the expansion draft in 2021, his coaches have typically kept him away from top line players at even-strength. Again, it makes sense considering his age and who he was competing with on his teams for minutes. The table below shows the breakdown of the competition levels defined by PuckIQ and the percentage of Giordano’s ice time against each. Maybe with the right partner, he could take on tougher minutes. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

(2) On-ice shot differentials (even-strength)

Now that we know how he’s been used, it’s worth knowing when he’s been on the ice, did his teams tend to out-shoot and out-chance opponents and keep the puck away from their own zone? Or did they spend more time defending and decreasing their chances of outscoring opponents?

To do this, I like looking at a player’s on-ice shot-share numbers, relative to their teammates. This factors in the quality-level of their roster and tells us if they’re thriving in the minutes their given. I tend to use Corsi For percentage, which is a proxy for puck possession, as well as Fenwick and Expected goals as a proxy for scoring chances.

What we see here is that when Giordano was getting the top pairing type minutes in Calgary, his overall numbers and impacts were solid for the most part, but there was a steady decline in 2020/21. This would explain why the Flames left him unprotected in the expansion draft in 2021 as they had younger talent pushing for roles and didn’t want to be allocating cap space for a declining asset. Seattle, and eventually Toronto, appear to have recognized this decline, and (as we saw in the usage data) reduced his workload and had him focus more on mid and lower tier opponents. By doing so, they got the most out of Giordano who posted very solid on-ice numbers as his teams often did outshoot and outchance opponents with him on the ice.

If the Oilers can apply the same usage, and keep him in a spot to succeed, they could squeeze out some quality minutes from him as well – even this late in his career.

(3) Penalty kill performance

Both Ceci and Desharnais were regularly deployed on the penalty kill last season, and it remains to be seen how the coaching staff will fill those roles. The current options aren’t really proven commodities, which makes adding Giordano a little more tempting. Last season, Giordano only played 46 games for Toronto, but he finished with the third highest rate of minutes per game on the penalty kill (2:15).

Looking at the impact Giordano has on the rate of shots and chances against shorthanded, we see that when he was that true number one defenceman in his prime, his teams often allowed more relative to the team level. This makes sense considering he was often against top powerplay units. But what stands out is that as he’s aged and moved into a more depth role, his impact has been positive and he’s helped to increase the odds of his team killing off penalties. Last season was the first time Giordano’s on-ice rates were higher than the team’s, which could be an outlier, but should be taken into consideration by the Oilers. This is where the PTO would make the most sense, as you can see firsthand what the issues could be, if they can be addressed, and if he could still have a role on the penalty kill going forward.

Thoughts

Based on all of this, I would consider bringing in Giordano to the Oilers training camp on a PTO. I’m not overly confident in the Oilers defensive group, and there’s a lot of uncertainty on how the new defencemen will fit into the roster, what roles they’ll have and what the pairings could be like.

Giordano has been fairly consistent the last few years, playing a depth role for his last 200 games and helping keep the puck going in the right direction at even-strength. He’s also someone that can help with the penalty kill, and potentially mentor some of the younger players who need to emerge from the Oilers prospect pool.

Because of the inefficient contracts, and unbalanced roster, management needs to be actively looking for inexpensive roster players and squeeze out as much value as possible.

Data: Natural Stat Trick, PuckIQ, HockeyDB