2 words...
O - Mark
Seriously though, OP sums it up pretty well. Lots of contributing factors causing the team to be 5th lowest in shots per game and 2nd worst in shots against. Differential of almost 5.8 shots per game. Over the course of an 82 game season that's close to 500 more shots the team faces than they get on the opposition. At even 8% accuracy... that's about a 40 goal differential right there.
No way the team can become consistently competitive until the ice isn't slanted towards their own net every game.
More size for more dirty crashing and banging. More willingness to shoot in all situations. Better faceoff abilities... Belanger in the pressbox or Smithson playing 8 minutes on the 4th line doesn't really help. They need their top 3 centres to be better on the dot... and that hasn't been the case for years.
I figured out some more stats... on the PP the Oilers take the 3rd lowest shots per minute in the NHL. That's the PP folks... where there is an extra man skating around and the Oilers have all their top talent out there... and they still aren't willing to shoot the fricken puck more.
It's easy enough to see that they need to get more aggressive and dirty... go to the net and shoot a lot more. Also they need to be better at wiping opponents off the puck and not letting them cycle in the Oilers end.
They simply don't have enough talent. Hall, Eberle, RNH... all great talents but two of those are having off years and dealing with injuries. Gagner is streaky and there are whole strectches where he isn't generating enough. Hemsky (when healthy) is an enigman (misspelled but I like it.
) at the best of times... either invisible or looks like he can walk through everyone and score almost at will... but certainly we don't see the latter often enough.
Yak still has his training wheels on and is slowly learning the NHL game. He just needs more time and experience and he'll be at the Hall level of performance soon enough.
Justin Schultz looked good early on but he's smashed into a wall of reality... again time and more experience is needed to get him on an upwards trajectory again.
The rest of the roster is an abyss of talent... MPS looks good in some games... and the odd game you have some compete from 1 or 2 others but it just isn't enough.
The team just isn't talented enough or big enough or physical enough and doesn't play with the level of heart and desire to get them to the next level. Too many passengers and not enough drivers.
Coaching obviously isn't getting enough out of the players either. You can say there is only so much coaches can do but every game is like a photocopy of each other. They don't seem to be able to change anything up... again combo of non creative coaching and lack of the right roster mix to achieve results.