After 28 games, the Oilers are sitting 3rd in a weak Western conference, 1st in the Pacific, with a record of 14-10-4.  They’ve outscored their opponents 55-49 at even-strength, a 52.88% goal-share that ranks them 8th the league. Their 55 goals ranks them 4th in the league, while their 49 goals against is the 7th highest. The Oilers currently have a 52.34% score and venue adjusted Corsi, which ranks them 9th in the league behind Boston, LA, Carolina, Washington, Florida, San Jose, St. Louis and Nashville (Natural Stat Trick). A team’s share of shots tends to remain consistent through a season as it’s influenced by the coaching staff’s tactics and player deployment, as well as what the player’s actually do on the ice. Really the only way the Oilers might see a drop in their shot-share is if the coaches change or if the team loses significant players.

There’s no indication that the Oilers are relying on luck-driven factors including shooting percentage and save percentage. The Oilers have a 7.74% shooting percentage and a 92.63% save percentage, which ranks them right around league average.  Quite often, team’s go on hot streaks either converting more of their shots into goals or preventing more shots from becoming goals. If either of these factors is significantly higher or lower than the league average, it’s worth monitoring as team’s tend to regress to the mean over time. I do think this team can compete for a playoff spot as long as McDavid and Talbot stay healthy. They can generate scoring chances at 5v5, ranking 4th in the league when it comes to high danger shot attempts (11.65 per hour), but they also allow a lot of chances against, allowing the 3rd highest (11.34 per hour).

Please note that I look at 5v5 play to assess a team and individual player performance as it’s when both teams are trying to score and trying to defend. Special teams play is important, but they involve specific players doing a specific task, which would skew the overall numbers for the team and players if included.

Couple thoughts:

The comment from Todd McLellan a few weeks ago that a lot of anti-stats people loved, but that I found very amusing, was the whole “eyeballs first….” thing. This implied that people who do statistical analysis or analytics aren’t watching the games enough and that their work is not well informed. Here’s the thing: watching the game and doing the analysis should always be dependent on one another. What you see/hear/read informs your analysis, but your analysis informs your viewing of the game or topic as well. That’s how it works in any industry that relies on stats and analytics, with hockey, a game, a goal-scoring contest, being no different. If you’re really only doing stats after, you’re at risk of overlooking key information or letting confirmation bias set it. It’s a recipe for failure. Can you imagine a real-world CEO having an “eyeballs first” perspective on his or her business? They’d be ridiculed.

With the upcoming expansion draft and the fact that a number of key players including McDavid, Draisaitl and Nurse will be needing contracts, it’s a bad time to start over-valuing depth defenceman like Kris Russell. I really don’t mind Russell as a depth player, but he’s been way over played by this coaching staff, and the underlying goal and shot metrics don’t paint a pretty picture (OilersNation). The team would be better off if  he was playing at his established NHL level, but the coaching staff has other plans (which includes reducing Klefbom’s minutes, awesome). The Oilers have to protect three defencemen this upcomg off-season, and it should be Sekera, Larsson and Klefbom. Signing Russell in January means someone is moving out, either one of Sekera, Larsson or Klefbom, and the future contract for one of the young players is being impacted. I don’t think it’s worth getting into it with Russell, and that they could move Russell at the deadline, especially if players get healthy and he’s been bumped down the depth chart by then. My ideal pairings: Klefbom-Larsson, Sekera-Benning/Fayne (7th defenceman) and a combo of Nurse/Davidson/Gryba (8th) for the third pairing.

Just want to throw this out there, but if anyone has any questions about analytics, feel free to email me (sunilagni23 at gmail dot com). There’s a lot of bad information floating around, so if I can be of any help, let me know and I’ll try my best to answer it. I’ve been following the discussion around stats and analytics for a long time now (learned a lot from Vic Ferrari, JLikens, Dellow, Zona, Reynolds, Battle of Alberta, Parkatti, plenty more), so I’ve seen the same cycle of topics come over and over again.

Twenty games into the season, it’s fairly obvious that Connor McDavid will be the Oilers prime driver for offence. Using his speed and skill to make quick plays in all three zones, McDavid can generate shots and scoring chances pretty much on his own. What the Oilers appear to be lacking now is consistent secondary offence, and at least one other offensive driver that can do some damage when McDavid is on the bench.

Last season, this role was held by Taylor Hall, who went on to score 65 points , and consistently enhanced the play of his linemates, including Leon Draisaitl. When Hall was on the ice at 5v5, the team got 51% of all of the goals the Oilers and the opponents scored. The vast majority of his teammates last season were below 50%. Losing a driver like Hall meant the Oilers were going to need to  acquire help or hope that one of the young forwards like Draisaitl or Puljujarvi would develop into the role.

On the first day of free agency, the Oilers signed forward Milan Lucic, who does have good underlying numbers, and has a history of contributing to his team’s offence. Last season in Los Angeles, the team had a 61% share of the total goals scored at 5v5 when he was on the ice. In Boston the year prior, the team had a 57% share. He doesn’t have the speed and playmaking ability of Hall, and benefited from having some elite level linemates in the past. But nonetheless, his previous teams scored at a good rate when he was on the ice.

Unfortunately, what Lucic has produced for the Oilers isn’t close to what he’s done in the past. After 20 games, Lucic has two goals and two assists at 5v5, 0.83 points per hour that ranks him last among the 13 forwards who have played at least 100 minutes this season for the Oilers. The team’s share of the total goals at 5v5 when he’s on the ice is below 50%, which is troubling considering he has played a lot with McDavid and Eberle on the top line.

After 20 games, it appears that the driver of the offence outside of McDavid has been 28 year old winger Patrick Maroon, who was acquired by the Oilers from Anaheim at the 2016 trade deadline. Maroon is currently tied for the team lead in goals and sits 6th on the team with 1.77 points per hour. When he’s on the ice at 5v5, the Oilers get a much higher share of the total shot attempts (55.5%) taken by his team and the opponents, +5.3% relative to his teammates. And this has been done playing 125 minutes with Draisaitl, 114 minutes with McDavid, and 36 minutes with RNH. Each of the three centers has done better when it comes to the total share of shot attempts with him than without him.

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.

Appears that we won’t be going a day without hearing how great defenceman Kris Russell is for the Oilers, or how bad his underlying numbers are.

Couple thoughts.

The original debate over Russell started last season when there was speculation that he and his agent were asking for a big pay day from the Flames. Here’s what TSN’s Bob McKenzie said back in February. (Source: TSN)

Here’s the thing: Russell is currently a fantastic bargain with a cap hit of $2.6 million. More nights than not, he plays well over 20 minutes and, at age 28, with his mobility and puck-moving ability, he’s a heady if undersized blueliner who’s pretty much in his prime and arriving to free agency at a very good time for him. The next deal Russell signs will be the best deal he ever signs; he’s going to more than double his current salary.

You don’t have to look very hard to find the guys Russell would view as open-market comparables: Montreal’s Jeff Petry got five years at $5.5 million. Edmonton’s Andrej Sekera got six years at $5.5 million. Similarly under-sized blueliner Jared Spurgeoncollected $5.2 million per year on a three-year term in Minnesota.

Were Russell to go to July 1, is there any doubt he’s going to get a five-year offer for between $5 million and $5.5 million? And he may well be looking for more than that, both in term and dollars.

Having watched him play in Calgary and reviewing some of the shot metrics, I thought this was absurd. But knowing how teams operate around free agency, it wouldn’t have surprised me if Russell and his agent were successful. Plenty was written about Russell leading up to the trade deadline and free agency as the player’s on-ice performance didn’t quite jive with the narrative of him being an effective defenceman. (TSN, FlamesNation, Hockey PDOcast, Stanley Cup of Chowder).

When the trade deadline rolled around, the Stars paid big to land Russell, which really gave those that dislike advanced stats some ammunition as a good general manager like Jim Nill acquired him. Russell found himself in a depth role with the Stars, who eventually lost in the second round against the Blues.

Following the playoffs, the Stars did not sign Russell and not a single team traded for his rights. Free agency rolled around, plenty of chatter, plenty of speculation about which NHL club would sign him. But then silence the rest of the off-season.

Three days before the season started, and after training camp, the Oilers signed Russell to a one-year, $3 million contract. In my opinion, it was an okay move as the team added an experienced defenceman that I hoped would push young defenceman like Nurse and Reinhart further down the depth chart. What’s frusrating is that the team failed to address a need on the right-side who could contribute to the offence and add an effective right-shot on the powerplay. What also became apparent is the fact that all 30 NHL teams figured Russell out and determined his value isn’t near what his agent had thought.

Fast forward to today, Kris Russell has played 13 games, mainly paired with Sekera, averaging 20 minutes per game and has three assists. He’s also last on the team when it comes to the team’s share of Corsi For and Expected Goals. He had a good start to the season, struggled in the games leading up to his injury, and has been alright since returning to the lineup. He’s an NHL defenceman who can provide a team with depth and experience. But he doesn’t drive offence or supress shots against and needs to be sheltered to be effective. Where he ranks on the current depth chart and what the defence pairings should be is worth discussing. But I don’t quite get why Russell has so much support when he plays one good game. It’s pretty pointless to use Russell to discredit shot metrics, as team managers and scouts came to the same concensus as the stats when he was available in free agency.

Really, the big question should be how much Russell is worth to the Oilers in terms dollars and term. I suspect most would agree that he’s not a $5 million per year player. But that to me is a more interesting discussion rather than the Russell-proving-advanced-stats-wrong narrative.