This morning, the Edmonton Oilers’ offence is a moribund 24th in the National Hockey League.
In their 19th game, they were shut out 3-0 Monday by the NHL’s second-worst defensive team, the Montreal Canadiens.
In nine of their 19 games, the “high-flying” Oilers have scored two goals or less. Their power play ranks 23rd, and their five-on-five scoring ranks 21st.
On Tuesday, with a game at Ottawa, they’ll play game No. 20, completing the opening quarter of the season that they, in large part, slumbered through, with a 9-8-2 record.
And fourth-line centre Derek Ryan knows exactly what the problem is.
“We’ve got to find some ways to get into the interior of ice,” he said. “Battles in front of the net. Some second, third chances. That’s where you score goals when you’re struggling to score.”
He saw what we saw against Montreal: An Oilers offensive game played on the perimeter. Lots of possession, but not nearly enough dangerous chances for Habs goalie Sam Montembeault.
Nobody really digging in. No one going to the hard places to score.
-
-
The Fan Hockey Show
Sportsnet’s Matt Marchese and former Los Angeles Kings executive Mike Futa take you around the league on Sportsnet 590 The FAN’s national hockey show, airing live across the country daily from noon-2 p.m. ET.
“It’s more of a mentality of getting to the interior,” Ryan said. “In the O-zone, we had a lot of puck time. But we’re (a bunch of) moving parts, and pieces going everywhere. But a lot on the perimeter.
“It’s more of a mentality change,” he said. “You’re not going to score pretty goals all the time. We’ve got to grind it out and get a greasy one every now and then.”
Teams with an abundance of skill tend to skew this way when things aren’t going to plan.
Too much perimeter play, too many passes, not enough net driving or directing pucks to the net, and hence no chance for a garbage goal.
Edmonton hits these stretches where it seeks the five-pass goal so consistently, that it deprives itself of any opportunity for a cheap carom, a lucky deflection or a rebound goal. Because nobody is in front of the net for any of those things to happen, and when they are, no one is shooting the puck.
“When things aren’t going your way, that’s when you’ve got to go back to your fundamentals,” said defenceman Mattias Ekholm. “Just play simple. Get the puck low to high, go to net, try to beat your guy out the corner and get that rebound or that tip.
“We’re playing OK, but we’re not playing good enough.”
Look, sometimes it’s just not there offensively. That happens.
The struggle is real right now, for a large group of Oilers who simply can’t find the back of the net this season:
Zach Hyman had 54 goals last season and has averaged 39 goals per season in his three years as an Oiler. This season he has three goals through 19 games, on pace for just 13.
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has one goal. Ryan and Vasily Podkolzin have zero. Viktor Arvidsson has only two.
Defenceman Evan Bouchard had another abysmal shift that led to the game-winning goal Monday.
But the default cannot be to get cuter. To pass more.
You can not default to the perimeter, because the lucky slump-buster will never happen, and eventually, you’ll just become what you become: a team on the exterior that’s easy to defend.
“It’s already been talked about,” Ryan said in the post-game dressing room. “The teams that are scoring at a high rate in this league are doing those things. We obviously have some of the (highest) skill in the league, but sometimes all of us have to get a little more greasy. Scoring greasy goals, rebounds, second and third (chances), whatever it is.”
Head coach Kris Knoblauch clings to the theory that Edmonton will revert to the mean. Which may well happen.
-
-
32 Thoughts: The Podcast
Hockey fans already know the name, but this is not the blog. From Sportsnet, 32 Thoughts: The Podcast with NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman & Kyle Bukauskas is a weekly deep dive into the biggest news and interviews from the hockey world.
“If you look at our goal scoring, we’re obviously near the bottom of the NHL,” he said. “But generating chances — shots from the slot, that’s usually the big one — in most offensive (categories), we’re top five, if not top three in the league.
“Whether those (analytics) are wrong or misleading… We are doing a lot of good things. Tonight, we got away from that.”
He wouldn’t sugar coat a light evening by his club.
“We had a lot of possession time, but a lot on the perimeter, “ Knoblauch said. “There was a lot of time in the offensive zone, but we really didn’t get very much. I don’t think we got our first five-on-five chance until at least the second half of that period.”
Montembeault was stellar in the Habs net. But he could see most shots, had almost no deflections or rebounds to deal with, and delivered by stopping the first shot all night long. And the second one simply wasn’t coming from Edmonton.
McDavid and Draisaitl combined for just five shot attempts, a slow night for two guys who have carried this team this far this season.
It’s time for some others to help.
OIL SPILLS — It was career game No. 900 for Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. He had a game-high five shots on goal and ripped one off the crossbar … It’s now 10 straight successful PKs for the Oilers stretching through four games … The Oilers had won four of their last five games in Montreal and are now 10-4-2 in their last 16 games at the Bell Centre.
