EDMONTON — Since assistant coach Glen Gulutzan took over the Edmonton Oilers power play six seasons ago, they have been the best there is.
The clip, 27.3 per cent since his arrival, commands respect. Enough respect that even today, with the Oilers not winning and the power play just one-for-15 since the start of the season, it’s not time to change.
This was head coach Kris Knoblauch after a loss in Dallas where the power play went zero-for-two on Saturday:
“We’re at the point where we’ve got to be considering making some adjustments to it. Every power play is going to go through a stretch of not scoring, but we’ve gone six games now, and we’re one-for-15.”
This was Knoblauch, after a couple of good sleeps, on Monday: “Every year there’s been talk about changing that power play, and every year they’re at the top in the league. So let’s just be cautious about changing things.”
The latter position seems to have been shaped by Gulutzan, which tells you that Knoblauch is smart enough to hire good people, then get out of their way and allow them to work.
The Oilers, like every team, hold a power play meeting in the hours before every game, all season long. There, Gulutzan works with this collection of Hart Trophy winners, 50-goal scorers, a super-elite point blaster and at least one generational player, coaching up the unit that has tilted the ice for this franchise for several years now.
“After six years of being the best power play in the league, on average?” asked Gulutzan. “Do we want to blow it up after six games? Well, that’s a question for the fans …”
It was the Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie who reminded us, “You can’t be fond of livin’ in the past. ‘Cause if you are then there’s no way that you’re going to last.”
But spend some time with Gulutzan, and you walk away convinced that touching up the Mona Lisa just because ticket sales at the Louvre are down is not the answer.
“Are we still creating? Yeah, we are. But not great. Not great,” he said. “But the reality is, this is really the third season we’ve gone through this.”
Two years ago, the Oilers power play lulled at the beginning of the year, then ended up with the best seasonal success rate (32.4 per cent) since the NHL began charting power play success in the 1977-78 season. The next two seasons started the same way.
“From the start of last season to Nov. 21, we were creating chances at the 15th-best rate in the league. Pretty average,” Gulutzan said. “Where are we today? We’re creating at the 14th best rate.
“You go back to the year before (2022-23) and it’s very similar. A shorter span before we got kind of going, (but) always off the start of the season. We’re not good out of the blocks.
“Where did we run from Nov. 21 to the end of the season (2023-24) in expected chances? First. Up until that point, 15th. Where are we today? We’re 14th.
“This is my seventh year, and (after his first season) we’ve never finished below 26 per cent,” he said. “I understand the need for (urgency) but for me, you’ve been down this road before.
“Our urgency has to go up. Our execution has to go up. But I’ve seen this movie before.”
A year ago the Oilers were 5-12-1 and heading into a game at the home of Tuesday’s opponent, the Carolina Hurricanes. They lost that game 6-3, and the power play only scored once in four tries, but it was the next game — a 5-0 win at Washington — that began Edmonton’s turnaround last season.
They were the best team in hockey from that Washington game on.
What happens in a routine power play meeting that turns out to be not so routine?
“Leo was very vocal,” Gulutzan said of Leon Draisaitl. “There was no X and O’s in the equation. Not in that meeting.
“The headliner of that meeting was Leo speaking to the group and saying, ‘Hey, we were the best that ever played a year ago, and we didn’t lose it. So let’s start executing and getting back to what we do. Getting pucks back, creating second chances, outworking our opponent five-on-four. Let’s just go back to that, and let’s get back dialled in.’”
Today, the confidence is still there.
While some power plays simply fall back on shot volume when pucks aren’t going in, defenceman Evan Bouchard famously stated on Monday that the players — and by extension, Gulutzan — will be the judge of what is required and when.
“As a whole, we would do what we’ve got to do,” Bouchard declared. “If it’s simplifying it, we’ll do that. If it’s making that extra pass, we’ll do that too.”
Bravo to Bouchard, who is moving past the stage in his development where he might not push back on a question like that.
Today, Bouchard has some Draisaitl in him. He has some bite.
As a younger, elite player in the game, how could that possibly not be a good thing?
