Early in his first season as head coach of the Edmonton Oilers, Todd McLellan emphasized the value of volume shooting, and its importance in generating offence.

Volume shooting, I don’t know what that does to Corsi or Fenwick because I don’t even know what those things are, but volume shooting is important. I think it breaks down defensive zone coverages, gets players out of position, taxes the opposition, makes them play more minutes in their zone. (Source)

Taking a look at the rate of shot attempts (i.e. Corsi For/60) the Sharks generated when McLellan was behind the bench, we see that they were always above the league average and typically ranked in the top five.

It appears that the Oilers have gradually made progress when it comes to generating shot attempts under McLellan, as they currently rank 12th in the league, 5th in the Western Conference, with 57.18 shot attempts per hour at even-strength. The top five teams: Boston, Toronto, Montreal, Pittsburgh and Washington.

As you might guess, one of the key drivers for the team’s rate of shot attempts includes Connor McDavid. When he’s been on the ice this season, the team has generated 62.66 shot attempts per hour, which is just below what Boston, who ranks first in the league in this metric, is generating. Without McDavid, the Oilers generate 54.55 shot attempts per hour, which is below league average, and would rank them 19th in the league. Also worth noting that the Oilers top line of McDavid, Maroon and Draisaitl is currently generating 71.12 shot attempts per hour.

If we break out the Oilers rate of shot generation over rolling 10-game segments, we see that they had at one point been generating over 60 shot attempts per hour, but steadily declined starting around the end of November. As I mentioned in my previous article, I suspect this has to do with two things. One, the team lost Darnell Nurse, who was showing progress in his offensive game, to a long term injury at the end of November. And two, the team began giving more and more ice time to Kris Russell, who provides very little to a team’s offence. More on individual players later.

In the graph above I have the team’s rate of shot attempts, but I’ve also added two additional lines: one for the rolling 10-game averages of when McDavid is on the ice (orange line), and one for the rolling 10-game averages of when McDavid is off (blue line). The team is having issues this season where they’re relying heavily on one line, more so than other teams with elite players. Knowing his ability to escalate the play of his team, and the importance of having depth to win a cup, we’ll need to know how the rest of the roster is doing without McDavid on the ice.

What we can start to do is look at each player this season, and how the team does when it comes to generating shots with and without them on the ice. I’ve ranked the table below by Corsi For/60 Rel, which tells us how the team does with the player on the ice, compared to how the team does when they’re on the bench. So when Patrick Maroon is on the ice, the Oilers generate 65.65 shot attempts per hour. Without him, that number drops by 11.77 shot attempts.

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.

An area that the Oilers will need to address going forward is their scoring production when McDavid is not on the ice. The young captain is the offensive catalyst that drives play and elevates his team when he steps on the ice. But when he’s on the bench, there’s been a significant drop in the team’s goal-share at even-strength.

• Related: The Edmonton Oilers With and Without McDavid – 2016, November 29
• Related: The Edmonton Oilers With and Without McDavid (Part II) – 2016, December 22

Heading into Tuesday’s night game against the Sharks, the Oilers had outscored their opponents 36-22 at even-strength with McDavid on the ice, which translates into a 62.07% goal share. Without him, the Oilers have been outscored 43-51, a goal-share of 45.74%. The Oilers do appear to have an okay proportion of the shot attempts (Corsi For%) without McDavid as they have a 50.51% share without him, and a 54.71% share with him. Corsi provides value here as it serves as a proxy for possession and predicts a team’s future goal share. When we look at the expected goals for percentage, which measures the quality of the shots generated and also predicts future goal share, the Oilers drop from a 56.25% share with McDavid on the ice to 45.71% share without him.

If we look at the rolling 10 game averages of the different metrics with and without McDavid, we start to see a pattern that should be of some concern for the team.

First up is a graph with the Oilers shot-share broken up into three lines: the team’s goal share with McDavid (blue), the team’s goal-share without McDavid (orange) and the team’s overall goal-share (black) (with and without McDavid).

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.

Forty games into the 2016/17 season, and the Oilers are holding a playoff spot, ranking third in the Pacific with 47 points, good for fifth in the Western conference. The team is coming off of a big win against a good Boston club last night, with Maroon, McDavid and Talbot leading the way. Up next is a back-to-back set against the Devils, who will have played the night before, and the Senators.

With the team in a playoff race now, it’s worth checking in on how the Oilers Pacific division rivals are doing in terms of goals and the shot metrics that predict future goals. The three California teams are going to be the ones to beat, but if the Oilers can get consistent even-strength scoring from the lines that don’t feature McDavid, they could potentially challenge for that third spot.

Here’s what the Pacific Division looks like today. I’ve included each team’s record, along with their points percentage, which is the points divided by the total points available (Source: Hockey Reference).

What we can also do is look at how each team is doing over 10-game, rolling segments this season. What we do here is take games 1-10, find the average of the metric, then take games 2-11, find the average, games 3-12, and so on. Doing so can highlight trends and can give us a better perspective of how a team’s entire season has been going.

I’ve focused on even-strength play (5v5), as it evaluates a team in a natural game setting where coaches are rolling their lines, trying to score and defend, and is where the majority of the game is played. These numbers are also score adjusted, based on Corsica Hockey’s methodology. This way, we eliminate score-effects, as team’s that trail in a game start to take more risks and generate more shots, while team’s that lead in a game tend to play safer, and generate far fewer shots. Without adjusting, team’s that trail a lot, like the OIlers have in the past, start posting better shot-shares, for example, mainly because they’re taking more risks trying to tie a game. So adjusting for score-effects puts more emphasis and value on the events that occur in close game situations and gives us a more accurate assessment of a team. More on adjusted metrics can be found at Corsica Hockey.

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.

A big reason why the Edmonton Oilers have been a competitive team this season has been the play of 29-year old goalie Cam Talbot. The netminder has started 32 of the Oilers 36 games this season, the most among all goalies, playing over 1,900 minutes, and has a record of 17-10-5 with three shutouts. Among the 46 goalies who have played at least 500 minutes at even-strength (5v5) this season, Talbot ranks 20th with a save percentage of 92.73%. Worth noting that his play on the penalty kill was a big reason why the team ranked so highly at one point, as he ranks 10th among the 41 goalies who have played at least 70 minutes shorthanded with a save percentage of 89.66%. (Source: Corsica Hockey).

The Oilers currently sit 10th in the league, and 5th in the Western Conference, when it comes to team save percentage at even-strength with 92.55%. This is a major jump from the past three seasons, as the club has ranked 26th, 30th and 29th since the 2013/14 season. The league average typically hovers around 92.0% to 92.5%, so anything near that can be considered progress for this franchise.

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.

A while back, I looked into how the Edmonton Oilers did across five metrics with McDavid on the ice and McDavid off the ice at even-strength (5v5) (Source). Those five metrics were:

• Corsi For% (CF%) – The proportion of all the shot attempts the team generated and allowed that the Oilers generated (i.e., Corsi For/(Corsi For + Corsi Against). This is used as a proxy for possession and can predict a team’s future share of goals.
• Fenwick For% (FF%) – The proportion of all the unblocked shot attempts the team generated and allowed that the Oilers generated (i.e., Fenwick For/(Fenwick For + Fenwick Against). This is used as a proxy for shot quality and considers shot blocking a repeatable skill. It can also predict a team’s future share of goals, slightlty better than Corsi.
• Scoring Chances For% (SCF%) – The proportion of all the scoring chances (as defined by Corsica Hockey) that the team generated and allowed that the Oilers generated (i.e., Scoring Chances For/(Scoring Chances For + Scoring Chances Against),
• Expected Goals For% (xGF%) – This is a weighting placed on every unblocked shot based on the probability of the shot becoming a goal. This depends on the type of shot, location and uses historical shot and goals data to come up with the probability for each unblocked shot. This has been found to be a better predictor of future goals than Corsi and Fenwick. (Detailed explanation can be found at Corsica Hockey)
• Goals For% (GF%) – The proportion of all the goals that the team scored and allowed that the Oilers generated (i.e., Goals For/(Goals For + Goals Against).

Here’s how the Oilers are looking with and without McDavid after 35 games.

Here we see that the club is relying heavily on their captain to score goals and generate chances and high quality shots this season. On the bright side, the team is posting a share of shot attempts and unblocked shot attempts above 50%, which is significant as the franchise has historically been very poor when it comes to these metrics, often ranking near the bottom of the league. Before this season, the Oilers have only once in their last 8 seasons posted a 25-game stretch of 50% CF% (Source). So the goals aren’t coming as often with McDavid off the ice, but the team isn’t getting caved when it comes to the number of shots.

While it’s expected that teams do better with their star players, there should not be a significant drop off without them. What we’ve seen in the playoffs year over year is that depth and consistency is critical for a team’s success. Ideally a team’s management group compiles a balanced roster and establishes a five or seven year window where they can be legitimate contenders. To do that, the team needs offensive output from across their roster, something the Oilers have struggled with so far this season.

Since the end goal is a championship, I looked into the last six Stanley Cup finalists to see how the team did over the regular season with and without their best player (which is based on the total number of points they accumulated in the regular season). Not an exact science, and there’s plenty of things you can alter, but I’m comfortable with this simple method.

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.