While the Oilers are definitely not the most physical team - I've said it before - it's the lack of defensive awareness that will cost them points and games.
Is Detroit physical? Is San Jose? Is Pittsburgh? Each has a very skilled top six, but most importantly, they're also defensively competent.
San Jose become much better the day that Joe Thornton became more of a team player and worked on his defense. Detroit became a better team when Stevie Y gave up his all-offense game and became one of the top twoway centres, and Datsyuk and Zetterberg have taken up his mantle.
Until the Oilers get better defensively, they will be pretenders before contenders.
Our hits leaders through 4 games are..... On D Smid and Fistric with 8 and Petry with 7, up front we have Yakupov with 4.
Detroit: On D they have Kronwall with 2 but who is widely known as a guy that can clean your clock with a big hit. Currently Lashoff and Smith have 4 hits apiece on the blueline for the team lead. Up front they have 5 players that have as many or more hits than Nail albeit for some of them in 1 more game. Their leaders in hits up front are Abdelkader and Tootoo with 10 each and then Cleary with 6 and Franzen with 5.
Pittsburgh has no less than 10 forwards with more hits than Nail albeit some in 5 games. Their forward leaders include: Kunitz with 18, Adams and Glass with 15 each, Cooke with 13, Dupuis with 9, Neal with 8, and even Sid has 6 hits in 5 games. Then they have Orpik with 11 and Engelland with 6, Engelland of course can also kick some ass when the gloves are off.
San Jose has 6 forwards with a hit a game or more led by Clowe (15) and Wingels (13). On D they have this guy named Douglas Murray who is a barrel chested beast of a man that has 15 hits to tie for the team lead then they have Stuart who just rocked Landeskog's world the other night and he has 6 hits on the year.
So am I to believe that our toughness and physicality is anywhere close to these teams? We had Eager who when on his game can bring that element, Hordi who is a goon and at most a 4th liner, Fistric who seems to be caught on the outside of a love triangle between Krueger, Potter and ? and then Smid who will rough and tumble isn't the biggest of hitters. Petry can bring that element when he's up to the task. Then there's Hartikainen whose physical game was inconsistent in the AHL and hasn't been that noticeable this season in Edmonton. Our 3rd line is softer than a man that caught a glimpse of Rosie O'donell in the nude.
Petrell has all of 2 hits in 4 games this season, players that have more hits than he does on our team: Yakupov, Gagner, Eager (in his 1 game), Hartikainen (in 1 less game), and Ryan Whitney. Players that are tied with Petrell: Belanger, Nick Schultz, Justin Schultz (I've noticed him being more physical than at any point in the AHL this year). Our combined hit total for our 3rd and 4th lines are as such:
Eager-3 (one game)
Hartikainen-3
Petrell-2
Belanger-2
Horcoff-1
Hordichuk-1 (one shift)
Smyth-1
Paajarvi-0
13 hits in 4 games or a little over 3 hits a game. Without Eager's contributions: 10 hits over 4 games or 2.5 hits/game. Without Hordichuk's memorable shift and Eager's game: 9 hits in 4 games.
Pittsburgh has 4 forwards that have as many hits by themselves as our entire 3rd and 4th lines have this season.
San Jose has 2 forwards that have as many hits by themselves as our entire 3rd and 4th lines have this season.
Detroit has 2 forwards that have just 3 less hits than our entire 3rd and 4th lines have this season.
Our team is a full of pushovers and that gets magnified when Eager and Fistric are out of the lineup.
