An area that the Oilers have struggled with in pre-season has been the penalty kill. And that was on full display in their recent game against Winnipeg, who scored four powerplay goals on their way to a 5-1 win over Edmonton. Yes it’s only pre-season, but if we look at what options the Oilers have for their penalty kill once they start playing meaningful games, it’s not looking pretty.

Last season, the Oilers finished 18th in the league when it came to killing penalties, with an 81.1% success rate (Source: Sporting Charts). And when it came to limiting unblocked shot attempts against (i.e., Fenwick), which is a good predictor of future success on special teams, the Oilers ranked 23rd in the league with 74.5 (Source: Hockey Analysis).

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.

One thing worth watching in training camp is where forward Patrick Maroon will slot in among the group of forwards. The 28 year old was brought in to bring in size and versatility, and has also shown the ability to put up points, typically when on a line with offensive players. Maroon will cost the Oilers $3.0 million over the next two seasons, a fairly reasonable price point, before becoming an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2018.

Following his arrival to Edmonton from Anaheim on trade deadline day, Maroon played in 16 games and produced very well playing mostly with Connor McDavid and Jordan Eberle,  notching 14 points (8 goals, 6 assists). His points per 60 shot up to 2.84 at even-strength, highest among all Oiler forwards, up from the paltry 1.00 points per 60 he posted last season with Anaheim.

Without a doubt, Maroon benefited from playing alongside McDavid, as the rookie typically had a positive impact on any of his linemates when it came to possession and production. The two along with Eberle played a total of 119 minutes at even-strength near the end of the season, finishing with a Corsi For percentage of 47.49%, an Expected Goals For percentage, which measures shot quality, of 53.27%, and a Goals For percentage of 69.23%, good for second among all line combinations that played at least 50 minutes together. The trio scored 17 goals together, which translates into a Goals For/60 of 4.51, good for 24th in the league. Their success however seems to be driven largely by a higher than team average shooting percentage and save percentage, as their PDO was at 107.33. (Source: Corsica Hockey).

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.

I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but I’m okay with the Oilers signing Eric Gryba to a Professional Tryout (PTO) agreement. The 28 year old, right shooting defencemen is expected at training camp, with a pretty good shot at making the team. It’s a low risk move that creates competition for one of the depth spots on the roster. And it should, in my opinion, make it harder for both Darnell Nurse and Griffin Reinhart to make the opening night lineup I have no hesitation in saying that both Nurse and Reinhart, who I think are good prospects, need extended time to develop at in the AHL. There is no harm in having these two play top pairing minutes, in all situations, against AHL-level competition in Bakersfield, until they’re ready to contribute on a consistent basis.

Back to Gryba, the things that he has going in his favor are his performance numbers from last season playing with young Brandon Davidson. They were one another’s most common defence partner, having played a total 279 minutes together at even-strength, predominantly as the third pairing on most nights, but did move up into the top four on occasion. Their 53.48 CF% at even-strength was second best among all Oiler defence pairings that played more than 50 minutes together (18 defence pairs in total). Source: Corsica Hockey.

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.

With training camp a few weeks away, the discussion around potential line combinations will begin to ramp up. With Milan Lucic joining the forward group, and new prospects like Jesse Puljujärvi  and Drake Caggiula entering the system, along with older prospects like Jujhar Khaira and Anton Slepyshevpushing for spots, the possibilities are endless.

But before putting together potential line combinations, I thought it’d be worth looking at how the different line combinations did last season. In particular, I looked at the combinations that played at least 50 minutes together at 5v5, and focused on their possession numbers (CF%), their share of quality shots/expected goals (xGF%) and their share of actual goals (GF%). I’ve sorted the table by Corsi For%, but you can click the table’s column headers to sort the other metrics. Also included in the table below is the time-on-ice (TOI), along with the line’s PDO and percentage of offensive zone starts. Please note that the numbers have been adjusted for score state, zone and venue. Source: Corsica Hockey).

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.

After a pretty brutal 2015/16 season, where he only scored one goal and notched two assists, Anton Lander has a lot to prove to Oiler fans. He was coming off of a pretty good 2014/15 season, when he was promoted to Edmonton from Oklahoma City after Todd Nelson became interim head coach, scoring six goals and finishing the season with 20 points in 38 games. Expectations were certainly raised last summer when he was rewarded with a two-year, one-way contract extension that would pay him $925K in the first year and $1.05 million in the second ($987,500 AAV), and a very good showing at the 2015 World Championships where he played on the top line for Sweden.

One thing to consider is that of the 20 points he scored in 2014/15, 9 were on the powerplay, which was clicking at a very high rate with Todd Nelson behind the bench. With McLellan behind the bench, Lander did not get nearly as much ice time with the man advantage, and understandably so: the lineup was healthier than the 2014/15 team and the additions of McDavid and Draisaitl were going to push players like Lander off of the powerplay. Regardless, Lander’s respectable 1.49 points/60 at even-strength was sixth among Oiler forwards who played at least 400 minutes in 2014/15 (12 forwards total). What was also promising were his possession numbers over those 38 games. Below is how he ranked among Oiler forwards with at least 400 minutes of ice time. (Source: Hockey Analysis)

Lander finished the season with a +1.2 Corsi For percentage relative to teammates, which ranked him behind top six forwards like Hall, Eberle, RNH and Pouliot. Lander’s two most common linemates that season were Matt Fraser and Andrew Miller, both of which are fringe players today. Lander did spend 93 minutes with Hall as well, which would absolutely give his numbers a boost. When it came to the rate of generating shot attempts (i.e., Corsi For/60), Lander finished third on the team with a +3.80 Corsi For/60 relative to teammates, but ranked 8th on the team when it to the rate of shot attempts against.

Fast forward to the 2015/16 season, and Lander’s productivity when it came to point production falls off of a cliff, as he finished the season with a 0.33 points/60 at even-strength, which was last on the team among forwards who played at least 500 minutes, and fourth last in the entire NHL. But when it came to his possession numbers relative to his teammates, Lander did not fare too badly.

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.

Last week, I looked into the performance of the Oilers depth forwards and defence core against different levels of competition using the WoodMoney metric. What we can do using this data is parse out how individual players did against three categories of forwards, and add another level of information to our analysis. The full rationale for the metric, the methodology to classify players and the complete data-set can be found at Because Oilers.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the different competition groupings.

Elite: at least one elite player must be on the ice. No Gritensity players may be on the ice.

Middle: Elite + Gritensity on the ice, or 3 mudddles

Gritensity: Any time a gritensity player is on the ice except when with an Elite.

I received a couple of requests to look into how Adam Larsson did last season as a New Jersey Devil using the WoodMoney data. What we know from some of the more established metrics available at Corsica Hockey and Hockey Analysis is that Larsson played predominantly with Andy Greene, starting a significant number of shifts in his own zone and actually fared pretty well when it came to limiting shot attempts, scoring chances and goals. We also know that when it came to offence, Larsson is a bit of a black hole as the team didn’t generate a whole lot with him on the ice.

Using the WoodMoney data, we can look into how Larsson did against the different levels of competition, including his proportion of ice, shot attempts against and Dangerous Fenwicks against.

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.

In case you missed it, Darcy McLeod and G-Money have developed WoodMoney, a new metric to evaluate how players have performed against different levels of competition. What they did was take every NHL player and classify them, using some pretty sound criteria (i.e., point production, ice time, Corsi Rel), into one of three categories: Elite, which are the top end players, Gritensity, which are lower end, replaceable-type players, and Middle, which are those that did not fall under the Elite or Gritensity group based on Darcy’s and G-Money’s criteria.

From there, they used the data available from NHL game sheets to determine how much time each player played against the different categories, and also how they performed when it came to possession and shot quality. The methodology and process to classify the players can be found at Because Oilers along with a link to the complete data-set. I highly recommend reading Darcy’s article to understand the duo’s rationale behind the new metric and why quality of competition is important. A couple links that explain G-Money’s Dangerous Fenwick metric, which measures shot quality, is also below.

• WoodMoney: A new quality of competition metric to analyze NHL data – Because Oilers (2016, July 19)
• Explaining Dangerous Fenwick – Oilers Nerd Alert (2015, October 30)
• A Brief Statistical Look at Dangerous Fenwick – Oilers Nerd Alert (2016, July 17)

Watching Oiler games and reviewing the deployment data available on great sites like Natural Stat Trick and Hockey Stats, we know that coaches try to find the match-ups they want and do everything they can to get specific players out against specific lines. Game-to-game, we can get a sense of which players are drawing the toughest opponents, which are getting time against the fourth liners, and how they perform. And with WoodMoney, we can start to aggregate each player’s outputs (i.e., shots, shot quality) against the different levels to add another layer of information to our analysis.

Two areas in particular that have been of interest to me since last summer when it comes to quality of competition are defencemen and bottom six forwards. In my opinion, neither area was addressed properly last summer by the Oilers, and it showed throughout the regular season. The team did add two experienced players in Lauri Korpikoski and Mark Letestu to their bottom six, but neither of them had a history of driving play or producing goals. As for the defence, the club added Andrej Sekera, who filled in admirably as a top pairing defenceman, and saw their faith in Brandon Davidson payoff very nicely. But the Oilers took a risk, an unnecessary one, starting the season with Griffin Reinhart, Eric Gryba and Andrew Ference.

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.