Post-Game Talk: I would simply kill a penalty

[Soundwave]

If we had a better option I’d be for all it. We don’t.

Ryan can’t do it anymore.

I don't think it really matters. If our bottom 6 is just going to continue to be a dead corpse that McDavid/Drai/Kane/Hyman have to carry like they did in the playoffs, well you might as well just move our best six forwards to our top 6 so we can concentrate as much hitting power there.

The bottom 6 can do their stupid dog and pony show of going out there and going for a skate and wasting time until McDavid or Drai is ready to get back on the ice. They're not scoring either way so who cares.

 

[Behind Enemy Lines]

I don't think Holloway is ready for that, frankly he looks exactly like a prospect who missed basically an entire calendar year of development because of injuries, but eh what can we even do at this point as Holland decided to double down on the Puljujarvi-Yamamoto-Foegele are our "support forwards" experiment. But Holloway is probably not ready for that role.

Disagree. Continued to elevate all through training camps and got hurt. Short-term, he can provide an energy push and spark to the top six as a worker bee with size, speed and willingness to crash.

Lost momentum with an unfortunate injury.

 

[Cloned]

Easier to 'hide' Holloway as a wing with top end players than hang him with 3C responsibilities on a porous bottom six. The kid earned the job, is now healthy, and should get some runway to support this team with a pretty defined toolkit of size, speed and tenacious puck hunter game. Let him crash boards for Draisaitl and help the super elite get more quality shot opportunities.

Holloway plays a risky game and Drai/Kane are already an adventure defensively with risky passes.

Put him with some “safer” players like Ryan and Foegele. (Yes, Foegele made a terrible mistake last night, but he’s generally on the right side of the puck and decent defensively in the neutral zone.)

I don't think it really matters. If our bottom 6 is just going to continue to be a dead corpse that McDavid/Drai/Kane/Hyman have to carry like they did in the playoffs, well you might as well just move our best six forwards to our top 6 so we can concentrate as much hitting power there.

The bottom 6 can do their stupid dog and pony show of going out there and going for a skate and wasting time until McDavid or Drai is ready to get back on the ice. They're not scoring either way so who cares.

I’m all for McLeod in the top 6. I just think you can try Holloway at 3C.

 

[Soundwave]

Disagree. Continued to elevate all through training camps and got hurt. Short-term, he can provide an energy push and spark to the top six as a worker bee with size, speed and willingness to crash.

Lost momentum with an unfortunate injury.

I question whether he has NHL level finishing ability and he's making a bunch of mistakes on top of that.

McLeod already basically is what we hope Holloway would be right now, so why not just play McLeod there. Holloway is clearly missing that 1 year of development.

 

[SnipeShowJB11]

I just watched this one (or tried to, as the NHL.TV stream for Oilers' games has basically failed 4 times out of 13 games so far.... I missed the third, but it's just as well).

Sigh... For me, this is easily the most frustrating of the 6 losses so far. The Jersey game was frustrating because they played well enough to win but just made a couple of errors late in the third. But this game was just abysmal. Let's break it down:
-- The Oilers gave up one goal against 5-on-5. The Oilers scored 4 goals. THERE IS NO WAY THEY SHOULD NOT BE GETTING A POINT FROM THIS GAME.
-- Foegele single-handedly caused the 1st Caps' goal with as brain-dead a giveaway as I've seen in 36 years.
-- Murray single-handedly caused the 2nd Caps' goal with his lazy swing-and-a-miss high stick.
-- Yamamoto single-handedly caused the 3rd Caps' goal with his ridiculous penalty-after-a-penalty, basically gifting the Caps a free goal at 5-on-3.

Those three players -- who directly cost the team THREE goals in this game -- are contributing NOTHING to the team right now. How pissed must Connor and Zach and others be to see the current stiffs on the line-up going out and giving up freebies to the opposition while they bust their butts and create goals? (Understand I'm a Yamo fan and I don't mind Foegele, but they need to do a lot more. Murray is just awful and should never have played.)

I don't know who took the penalty for the fourth Caps' goal thanks to NHL.TV, which sucks shit. But I'm guessing one individual Oiler who contributed little to the game took it. Am I right?

Finally, I'll just leave this glorious stat.

Worst PKs at present:
30. Edmonton 67.9%
31. Anaheim 63.3%
32. Vancouver 60.5%


Yep.

I am so confused. Is SN NOW (Premium Version) the same as NHL.TV?

I just know they always had NHLCI. Now it's all this different sh**

 

[Behind Enemy Lines]

Holloway plays a risky game and Drai/Kane are already an adventure defensively with risky passes.

Put him with some “safer” players like Ryan and Foegele. (Yes, Foegele made a terrible mistake last night, but he’s generally on the right side of the puck and decent defensively in the neutral zone.)


I’m all for McLeod in the top 6. I just think you can try Holloway at 3C.

I don't think you throw a rookie into a drowning goal suppression team and ask him to hold down a 3C responsibility. Better to support a super elite Draisaitl (who can at times veer into risky passing) and Kane who can crash and bang but also score.

We'll leave this at disagree.

 

[Cloned]

I don't think you throw a rookie into a drowning goal suppression team and ask him to hold down a 3C responsibility. Better to support a super elite Draisaitl (who can at times veer into risky passing) and Kane who can crash and bang but also score.

We'll leave this at disagree.

The third line isn’t really a traditional checking line on this team anyway though. Holloway hasn’t looked great when in the top 6 so far. Albeit limited time, but that’s for a reason.

 

[Behind Enemy Lines]

I question whether he has NHL level finishing ability and he's making a bunch of mistakes on top of that.

McLeod already basically is what we hope Holloway would be right now, so why not just play McLeod there. Holloway is clearly missing that 1 year of development.

Whole team has unravelled with their defensive zone play - work rate and disciplined, responsible play. It's hardly like Holloway stands out with mistakes the past three meltdown games. McLeod is at least holding his head above water at 3C so I would keep him there and tighten up bottom six personnel to at least be competent, diligent checkers. Holloway can alleviate a current blackhole at top six wing - in the short-term as a spark. But prospectively longer if he sticks with a simple, heavy support game.

 

[Drivesaitl]

The PK coaching is a problem, that's on Manson to figure that out because it wasn't that bad last year.

The Oilers allowed 3.687 GA in the playoffs, they are averaging 3.61 GA thus far this year, so it's actually down from the playoffs believe it or not and that's with Campbell going through an adjustment phase (to put it lightly) and the PK falling off a cliff.

Both are too high, but what do you expect, Holland didn't do anything to add to the D group.

Under Tippett the offence was so-so and the defence was also poor (about 3.1 GPG), at the very least now the Oilers have a powerful offence (3rd in the league, should be 1st in the league if Puljujarvi/Foegele/Yamamoto weren't dumbasses). So the Woodcroft Oilers at least score goals, the Tippett Oilers were a team that was good at nothing but special teams.

But Woodcroft/Manson plainly aren't defensive geniuses. To have a better defence the onus is on Holland to go get some better defensive D.

This team is scoring the same, identical 2 Goals per game 5 on 5 that the Tippet clubs were. I already posted up the respective seasons where the Oilers were 2.75 and 3.00 Ga /game in Tippet full seasons. DRASTICALLY better than now. night and day better.

Better D than we have are not imminently available. Better coaching than we have was definitely available.

 

[Ritchie Valens]

I'll say this again. Under Tippett Drai steadily every season talked about limiting GA, about doing more to prevent GA and feeling like he can get to a Selke like game. Indeed that aspect of Drais game progressed most under Tippett. Its concerning to me that his own zone play has fallen apart under the new coaching staff. Its not isolated. All of Drai, Nurse, Ceci, really all our D have been worse with the new coaching staff and not what one would expect being that we have a former D as coach. Obviously Yams and Pulju have struggled mroe too.

meanwhile last season every 2nd quip about how good Woody was, it was coming from Foegele. Pretty ironic. He's not even an NHL caliber player now.

Which players have actually improved? Ryan. Short list.

I just don't know what changed from just this past May to now. If the coaching staff changed their defensive structure and PK structure trying to re-invent the wheel, scrap it and go back to what was working.

It just seems like "new blood" coaches try make their mark and become the next Scotty Bowman. In doing so, they fall flat on their face.

Just simplify things. Get the team on the same page working together. Right now you have some that are pushing, others pulling.

Thanks for clarifying. I still view his comments relate to the team's play on-ice and the hesitancy he references in it. Sounds to me more about a loss of confidence within the personnel which is leading to hesitancy in their execution which is leading to inconsistent execution (do we pressure? sit back?). Clearly it is snowballing toward the worst PK results in the league. Draisaitl nails the core issue of taking way, way too many penalties. This has led to the PK units being on the ice way, way too much.

Doesn't absolve the coaching staff though either. They will need to adjust system and likely personnel. One critique I have of Woodcroft is his roster deployment. Completely blendered the lines tonight and had very little going for the bulk of this game.

Yep the team is taking way too many penalties but on the other hand too, some of those have been pretty bad calls. But they have to fight through that and kill those off.

The PK is so bad right now, they may as well play rec league style right now and play no contact.

 

[Soundwave]

This team is scoring the same, identical 2 Goals per game 5 on 5 that the Tippet clubs were. I already posted up the respective seasons where the Oilers were 2.75 and 3.00 Ga /game in Tippet full seasons. DRASTICALLY better than now. night and day better.

Better D than we have are not imminently available. Better coaching than we have was definitely available.

What is the point of even banging this drum? Do you seriously think they are going to pay three coaches at the same time and now find someone else firing a guy who took you to a Conference Final just a few months ago?

You might as well just declare the franchise a Gong Show.

Woodcroft is a good offensive coach, he has the Oilers scoring near the top of the league even with Holland's $9 million of suck in Foegele, Puljujarvi, and Yamamoto. If those bozos could even have 3 or 4 goals right now instead of 1 combined the Oilers are no.1 in the league in scoring. He's not a great defensive coach but he has poor personnel on that front.

We saw that in the playoffs too, the Oilers allowed the same amount of goals against they are now (so I guess Duncan Keith was no magical elixir on that end), actually a tad more.

The team gave up on Tippett, you can't keep a coach employed when the team loses games under him for almost a full calendar month straight and you have the goalie getting into it with him etc. etc. He was done here. Toast.