Oilers not firing on all cylinders as trade deadline approaches

EDMONTON — Let’s think of an NHL roster like a car. A confluence of interconnected parts that come together to produce a single entity — a game — which is the output of all the working parts doing their own specific job.

Contracts (and no-move clauses) marry teams to certain parts that cannot simply be changed out on a whim. Andrew Mangiapane, waived by the Edmonton Oilers on Sunday, was not one such part.

Otherwise, they are forced to depend on those parts, whether they’re working well or not. If those parts function at less than their required level, the car — the team — cannot purr along at its highest level.

Take Oilers defenceman Darnell Nurse, for example.

The 11-year veteran is a huge part of Edmonton’s defensive game on the ice, and their dressing room culture off of it. He’s been there since the start, before Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, and he has the battle scars to prove it.

Nurse wears an ‘A’ as an alternate captain, and for better or worse, has been given a large percentage of the salary pie ($9.25 million per season).

Nurse is trusted with nearly 21 minutes per game of ice time — fourth on the Oilers. Edmonton’s defensive game, like it or not, turns around Nurse’s axis to some degree.

If Nurse’s game becomes leaky or untrustworthy, which it has been for much of the season, Edmonton’s overall game becomes untrustworthy for the one-third of the game that he plays. As a leader, if he’s not performing, it becomes impossible for him to call on others to block more shots, or make better plays.

You might say, “Then don’t play Nurse so much!” Fine.

But what does head coach Kris Knoblauch do with those minutes then?

Evan Bouchard and Mattias Ekholm, the first pairing, can’t take on more ice time. Their plate is full.

And the third-pairing guys — Ty Emberson and Spencer Stastney — are third-pairing guys for a reason. If they could handle 20-plus minutes a night, they’d be second-pairing guys, right?

Now, back to the car analogy. You can trick our car out at the deadline with an extra, optional part here and there. But if the core pieces — Nurse, the penalty kill, the depth scorers, an overall game that respects the defensive side of the sport — don’t effectively cover off their responsibilities, it doesn’t matter who or what you add.

And it’s not just Nurse.

The other core pieces on this roster are playing an unbalanced game as well. Lots of offence is great, but that’s only one facet of the game — a facet that becomes secondary to solid defensive play as the games get more important.

Since Christmas, at five-on-five, Edmonton’s top line of McDavid between Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has been on the ice for one more goal for than against. The trio has produced 29 goals and 73 points, yet it has a 5v5 goals share of barely over 50 per cent.

Draisaitl is minus-2, with a goals-for share of 47 per cent. He has 11-19-30 since Christmas.

So the team’s top producers function offensively extremely well. But they give up as much as they get — sometimes more.

The top pairing of Ekholm and Bouchard is plus-17 since Christmas. But the second pairing is minus-13, with Nurse holding a 39 per cent goals-for differential, worst among Edmonton’s top six forwards and top four defencemen.

Here’s another telling stat: in their past 10 games, the Oilers have scored the most goals in the NHL (44) and allowed the most (46). Their record in that time is 4-6.

The Buffalo Sabres have played 11 games in that time span, going 8-2-1. They’ve scored one less goal (43) but allowed 18 fewer (28).

So it’s awesome that McDavid is heading towards another Art Ross, and that Bouchard has crawled into the NHL’s top 10 with 69 points and might be a Norris candidate. But here’s the problem.

The team is not winning games — they have 22 regulation wins in 61 starts — and that’s the only thing that matters.

McDavid has said it 100 times: they’ve had plenty of individual awards in this dressing room. There’s only one trophy that really matters.

With McDavid under contract for only three more playoff runs, and with the spectre that it could only be two if he doesn’t re-sign, general manager Stan Bowman has no choice but to be all in at the trade deadline.

Even if it is possible that, like the Florida Panthers, the sheer number of games this Oilers roster has played over the past three seasons — coupled with the frenetic pace of this compacted Olympic year — has left the Oilers too mentally fatigued to locate a game worthy of a third straight Stanley Cup Final.

Bowman’s primary deadline goal is to find a partner to play with Nurse, like a gear head adding horse power to an already powerful muscle car. That could be the antidote for Nurse’s game, which was at a seasonal low in Game 61 at San Jose on Saturday.

But Bowman can add all he wants.

If Nurse doesn’t find his game, if McDavid turns pucks over in a 4-4 game on the road, if the shot blockers don’t start selling out and blocking some shots, if goalie Tristan Jarry doesn’t perform to the level expected of him…

The new part will be just that.

A part. Of a team that doesn’t win.

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