It's Not The Water Or Culture, It's Your Forward Depth, Dummy.

[Soundwave]

Memo to Bob Nicholson. It's not the water or "culture". Both were fine just 18 months ago.

The real issue with this team is and always has been the forward depth. Now I will cite the 16-17 Oilers, but it's also time for Oiler fans to hear some damn truth about that team too -- that team was fool's gold. It was not sustainable.

But for one season the Oilers had

McDavid - 30 goals, 100 points
Draisaitl - 29 goals, 78 points
Maroon, 27 goals, 42 points
RNH - 18 goals, 43 points
Eberle - 20 goals, 51 points
Lucic - 23 goals, 50 points
Letestu - 16 goals, 35 points
Pitlick - 8 goals in 31 games (21 goal rate pro-rated)

That's 7 forwards that scored 15+ goals and another one that was scoring at a 21 goal clip before injury (Pitlick).

Now effectively gone from the team is Maroon, Letestu, Pitlick, Eberle, and basically Lucic too as he was seemingly lucky to have that final good year before dropping off and is in no way, shape, or form anywhere close to a 20 goal player anymore.

So there is the root of your problem.

Now there is going to the the "yeah but McDavid and Draisaitl and RNH score more now, so it shouldn't matter as much to lose depth!" ... the problem with this logic is that offence has risen league-wide dramatically, so the Oilers needed BOTH the increase from McDavid/Drai/RNH AND to retain the offensive depth. The gains from McDavid/Drai/RNH scoring more are largely cancelled out by the rest of the league scoring more. The Oilers scored 247 in 16-17, that was good for 8th best in the league that year, but this year 247 is bottom half of the NHL -- the league has shifted dramatically to more scoring and the Oilers have completely missed the bus.

Also largely speaking 16-17 was fools gold. Thinking Lucic + Letestu + Maroon + Eberle (unreliable) in the long run were going to be franchise pillars that could year in, year out give the team the secondary scoring it needed was foolish. It worked for a year but it collapsed after that and now the task for the Oilers is to find sustainable offensive depth.

You have a fragile team today that gets discouraged because they know they don't have the offensive depth to ever come back from a serious deficit and are terrified of making mistakes, but are also cheating for offence because offence is so hard for this team. That's your problem. Not culture, not water, until you fix that nothing is changing.

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[MikeGrier99]

The problem is that we haven't had a general manager that knows how to build a hockey team. We had forward depth and traded it for peanuts.

 

[Del Preston]

Bobby Burgers needs to hire a [good] GM within the next two months so we don't have to hear him talk about hockey again.

 

[Soundwave]

Like I said too the Oilers chose the worst possible time to go backwards offensively too -- in 2016-17, the Oilers scored 247 goals, which was good for 8th best overall.

Not bad. Except today, this season, 247 would actually be in the bottom half of the NHL. Scoring has dramatically risen just as the Oilers have gone backwards forward wise (on pace for 229 goals in the NHL this year, which is comfortably bottom 10).

This is why the "yeah but McDavid/Leon/RNH score so much more today! Surely that cancels out some of our lost depth!" logic doesn't work. It doesn't because the rest of the league scores a lot more. The Oilers needed not only to stay at 247 .... they needed to be *above* 250-260 goals/year if they wanted to stay a good, competitive team.

Relying on Lucic to be a 20 goal scorer every year was incredibly stupid. So even if they had kept Eberle, Maroon, Letestu, etc. they'd be better off, but they'd probably still have been in for trouble long term. They could not afford to trade away Hall and assume Lucic was going to replace most of that offence or pass on all of Barzal/Boeser/Connor/DeBrincat/Tkachuk/Aho etc. etc. in the long run.

The league changed in the last two years to the point where even 247 goals is pretty paltry ... the Oilers built themselves a 230 goal team instead ... very stupid.

 

[Bank Shot]

The forward core is a real problem.

They are bad not only offensively, but also defensively.

You can get away without being a high scoring group if you can play defense, but the Oilers forwards are atrocious in all zones.

I would bucket them as such:

Great D forwards: None

Good D forwards: RNH, Rieder,

Average D forwards: Mcdavid, Chiasson, Khaira, Brodziak

Poor D forwards: Draisaitl, Lucic, Rattie, Kassian, Puljujarvi, Gagner,

 

[Soundwave]

229 goals/year which is what they're on pace for is no where close to good enough.

New NHL has changed, all "good" teams score 260 a year or more without much fuss.

They're never going to be a defensive juggernaut unless they fluke out into a Dahlin tier no.1 D in the draft. They have to be able to score.

247 in 16-17 was OK, but even that today is not great. The NHL has changed, you have to be able to score and that requires depth, three guys cannot give you enough scoring.

 

[Wretched Oil]

oy, another expert!

 

[CycloneSweep]

oy, another expert!

Is he wrong?

 

[BlackDogg]

Is he wrong?

No. Amazing what has happened. Would if they had not required experience for the GM job. Probably would have been much better. Doing nothing would be better.

 

[Little Fury]

The forwards are hapless and hopeless, but the fact that there's maybe one guy on the blueline who can hit a forward in stride means there's no transition game.

Imagine M.C. Escher painted a sh*t hockey team and you have the Oilers. You can go back and forth on "it's the D" "no, it's the forwards" or "no it's the goaltending" and no one would be wrong. There just aren't enough good players on this team, period.

 

[Cypress]

Yeah, 16/17 too many guys with career years, unsustainable shooting%, etc. The problem is we will have a hard time doing anything about it anytime soon due to the cap situation. Something to build towards, hopefully the league doesn't transition back to a grinding game by the time we get there.

 

[SlickHands]

Problems don't exist in a vacuum. They are interconnected. That the Oilers have picked at or near the top of the draft for over a decade suggests that the issues are deeper than depth (pun only slightly intended).

 

[Soundwave]

The forwards are hapless and hopeless, but the fact that there's maybe one guy on the blueline who can hit a forward in stride means there's no transition game.

Imagine M.C. Escher painted a sh*t hockey team and you have the Oilers. You can go back and forth on "it's the D" "no, it's the forwards" or "no it's the goaltending" and no one would be wrong. There just aren't enough good players on this team, period.

There aren't but only four guys on the team on pace to score over 15 goals will never work.

It's even worse in the modern NHL where scoring is way up, even the 16-17 Oilers would probably have some problems keeping up even with four 20+ goal scorers, we've gone backwards in scoring while the league has gone way up. Bad combination.

 

[Little Fury]

There aren't but only four guys on the team on pace to score over 15 goals will never work.

It's even worse in the modern NHL where scoring is way up, even the 16-17 Oilers would probably have some problems keeping up with four 20+ goal scorers, we've gone backwards in scoring while the league has gone way up. Bad combination.

Yeah but the reasons for that are both complex (bad systems, weak transition game, too much time in their own end) and simple (not enough good players). I don't think focusing on one area or specific player type is a good idea (remember when they wanted more guys who could play "heavy hockey"?) when they need to raise the overall quality of the roster.

 

[oobga]

I worry more about the D. Just not enough skill back there. Not enough ability to move a puck. It makes life too hard for all our mediocre to poor forwards, and it also takes away from the games of our good forwards.

The level of skill we need to add at forward is far higher than it should have to be because of how our D are unable to consistently help push the pace into the offensive zone. You need the highest tier elite forwards to consistently overcome that shortcoming. Until the D is improved, we are gonna keep bringing in guys that have a history of scoring 10-20 goals, and they will end up <10 goal scorers here, or just a big fat 0 like a Rieder, lol.

This team is just so behind the curve of the league in how our D group is constructed. I would argue what they are instructed to do could also be creating a handicap as well, but that doesn't excuse the lack of puck moving ability.

 

[Soundwave]

I hate to use the Flames as an example but they are an example of a changing NHL

16-17 Flames: 226 Goals For, 221 Goals Against

16-17 Oilers: 247 Goals For, 212 Goals Against

Flames were a mediocre team about middle of the pack for goals against, but

18-19 Flames (pace): 302 Goals For, 243 Goals Against (on pace)

18-19 Oilers (on pace): 229 Goals For, 275 Goals Against (on pace)

You can see the Flames goals against has actually risen, but their goals for has dramatically risen to go with it, making them a better team than 2 years ago.

Oilers GA has gone up with injuries on the blue line, but the goals for is terrible, especially when you consider McDavid/Draisaitl/RNH are bringing more goals to the table.

The forwards have completely fallen apart. The NHL game changed in two years and the Oilers not only didn't change to suit it, they've gone backwards.

 

[Drivesaitl]

With around 20 games left we have 4 players with double digit goals, 1 of them is atypical, completely stalled, really a no talent, and we have only 5 players with as many as 20pts, one of them a Defenceman we recently nickel and dimed for a contract.

We have such dismal depth it precludes winning.

As the OP mentioned we lose games on down the lineup. McD and Drai together are over 1G better than opposition/60mins EV. They do their work. We lose any stagger we would otherwise have on down the lineup where goals never come and GA do.

This is a Chiarelli lineup so bad it looked to Manning, Spooner, Cave, Wideman, Malone, now Gagner for help.

Gagner could indeed be the case example. Deemed not good enough to play for the Oilers when he departed, but thanks to Chiarelli managerial acumen and asset resources Gagner, the same player, is now a player that SHOULD on out topsix continuously and should be our 2nd unit PP QB (he is). Gagner tells really the whole depth story. Gagner isn't better than he was, but he sure looks like it in context to this lineup.

 

[Soundwave]

Maroon - 27 goals
Lucic - 23 goals
Eberle - 20 goals
Letestu - 16 goals
Pitlick - 8 goals/31 games (21 goal pace)

Has turned into

Chiasson - 17 goals but in a massive slump/regression
Reider - 0 goals
Spooner/Strome/Gagner - 3 goals combined
Lucic - on pace for 6 or 7 goals
Khaira - 3 goals/53 games

And to be clear I think even the 16-17 group was not sustainable but at least for a year they were able to pull it off.

Letestu alone will probably outscore Lucic + Khaira + Spooner/Strome/Gagner + Reider combined.

You can't say that's just "culture". That's a massive loss in scoring.

 

[ElysiumAB]

Chop Water. Carry Culture.

 

[BlackDogg]

The only thing I can see that is slightly improved is the defence. We don't have ference, gryba, fayne, nikitan, Schultz was terrible here, but it is not much improved considering the assets given up.

 

[Aerchon]

Forward depth was not an issue last year.

It has been this year.

However, it is still not as bad as problem as you make it out to be and the defense and goaltending have absolutely been far more worrisome.

I find behind most "we need more offense" post is an angry fan that hates the Hall and Eberle trades rather than looks at the overall team scoring.

 

[Soundwave]

Forward depth was not an issue last year.

It has been this year.

However, it is still not as bad as problem as you make it out to be and the defense and goaltending have absolutely been far more worrisome.

I find behind most "we need more offense" post is an angry fan that hates the Hall and Eberle trades rather than looks at the overall team scoring.

It was a problem last year also, only 3 Oilers scored more than 15 goals, Maroon would have been the 4th but he was traded.

But that's not near enough.

What you don't get is the NHL has changed, even 247 goals from 16-17 today is nothing great. That would be an average team offensively today.

 

[joestevens29]

Losing every trade probably is the bigger issue.

 

[Soundwave]

If you look at all 3 Canadian teams that are deemed "really good" you see

Winnipeg - 278 goal pace
Toronto - 289 goal pace (w/o Matthews/Nylander for a big chunk of that)
Calgary - 300+ goal pace

Neither Calgary or Winnipeg are in the top 10 for goals against (fewest), so neither are defensive juggernauts, surprisingly Toronto is 6th lowest in GA, but they're the only one of the three that you could say has really nice GA numbers.

All three score like crazy and score way more than the 16-17 Oilers even (247 goals). Yes the Oilers need to tighten up defensively but lets be honest ... without a defacto superstar no.1 D they're never going to be some defensive powerhouse. Not unless you hire whatever voodoo Trotz is doing (and I have doubts that is sustainable either).

 

[bucks_oil]

It's column A and column B and column C. My personal view is:

2016: Losing Hall sucked, but the additions of Lucic, Larsson, Maroon, Talbot, re-addition of healthy Klef... plenty of new voices in the dressing room (in addition to the world's best player) changed the belief (i.e. the culture) and allowed us to play solid, two-way hockey leading to a disappointing defeat in the 2nd round.... that all comes from (i) culture, and (ii) big seasons from most of the above... and those two elements masked some very limited depth on D and over-reliance on a fresh-minded, confident goalie, who made up for some ~still so-so defense

2017: Chia did nothing. Sekera was injured, Klef was injured, lack of D-depth started killing us... led to early game breakdowns, which lead to (over time) some very human, turning to shaky-confidence goaltending. Couple that with a decrease in offense due to Ebs gone... and you saw what happened. But there was also something different about the way the team was playing... more devastating defensive breakdowns. You can blame that on lack of horses (depth)... that's true, but there was also a re-infusion of the same sort of frustration (which can lead to a lack of systems play) that we saw here during the very dark years.

2018: More of the same, and if anyone can explain how this same team goes 8-1 with Hitch, followed by the last string of "playoff position losing" hockey without talking about what's been going on between the ears of the players... (culture)... that's your prerogative. I don't buy "exhaustion" of our best guys, unless you mean mentally (in which case I agree).

In short, we have suffered from a lack of D-depth. It improved briefly, we had a fresh goaltender and that allowed us to temporarily fire on all cylinders. We did so at the expense of wing depth,... and still needed more D-depth... and a backup... none of that was addressed, we had injuries... we got worse... extend that to this year and you are seeing guys check out again. They are only human... but we also need some fresh blood.