Post-Game Talk: Where's all that talent Bob?....

Little Fury

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Jun 21, 2006
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No. You just can't have a controller disconnect moment like that. In a game that big. He just gave up.

Has nothing to do with how good he is. He is vital for this team.

When you see guys like him or McJesus busting their a**, it can motivate the rest of the bums we have on the team.

It's bad enough we have to count on two guys who are just barely old enough to shave to generate basically an entire teams worth of offense without expecting them to also be the emotional and moral centres of the team.
 

Drivesaitl

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It'll be so sweet when we send Draisatl up the river for another Adam Larsson.

Yep. Hilarious too to see posters like HK asking why its not allowed here to go after star players.

In anycase, and as ironic as those views are of course any player can be critiqued, its about the absurdity and specificity, and specious nature of the critique. Made worse in that these are timing critiques.

lets blast and bench Drai, 4th in NHL goal scoring, the hottest goal scorer in the league even including OV (actually only 5 back of OV and one goal back of anybody else. Lets scratch the player that is one goal removed from being 2nd in NHL scoring. On a team that can't shoot straight and can't score.

Drai is also +3, with the most difficult minutest possible in a starring role on a bad team with bad goal differential. Lets scratch that player and play somebody else instead and we already have a Kassian on the top line.
 
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joestevens29

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I wonder if this team has gone back to the ways of not going over film with the players because they don't want to hurt their feelings.

Make these guys watch 10 hours of their games with sportsnet intermissions.
 

Little Fury

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Took a gander at the numbers. In all situations, with 97 and 29 on the ice, the Oilers have outscored the opposition by 44 goals. With the two of them off ice, they've been outscored by 38. 5v5? +11 with, -21 without. They're doing their jobs, maybe the rest of these bums could try doing theirs.
 
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Drivesaitl

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Yep. He misses some reads. He’s young. It happens. He’ll learn.
His defensive issues are being overblown a little.

Yep. This team lacks a lot. There are many Oilers that are terrible at both ends and here we are focusing on a young player on pace for a 100 point season. It’s dumb.

My concern here is that I’ve seen this talk before. It results in the team sending away an excellent player.

Draisaitl has flaws. Like Hall, Poti, Arnott, Schultz, Eberle and Petry did.

The objective dynamic is, and people fail to realize this, is that star players elicit scrutiny. In otherwords people watch these games cueing on McD, Drai, watching what they do, this is what people tend to track. These are the two players most involved in all plays, that are most involved around the puck, that most have the puck. David Staples started an uninformed "errors stat"years ago. Not sure how he's batting now but when he started it out he was finding that the very top players were most perceived to have the most errors. But reasons for this was toi, QOC, how integral they were to teams, how much they had the puck, how much chance generation depended on them, etc.

Related, most star players are among league leaders in turnovers.

Its as if people can't see the forest for the trees and see a mistake here and there and just zero in on that and in technicolor tunnel vision. Hockey, like most sports is a game of exploiting or exploited. A player contribution is the sum of the instances of the player leading to positive, vs negative results while on the ice.

Drai holds up his end. The team fails when McD, or Drai, are not on the ice.
 

rboomercat90

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Mar 24, 2013
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I have yet to see anyone answer the riddle of how they hold Drai accountable without basically throwing the game.
What’s the difference? They’ve been throwing games for weeks as it is. They all have to start playing the right way at some point if there’re ever.
 
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bucks_oil

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It's 100% a mistake. By design, it isn't Leon's responsibility to collapse to the net there.

Kane obviously sneaks in behind him and the mistake came with Leon not having his head on a swivel to see that coming. By the time he saw it, it was too late to react.

Look, there is a hazy line between "lazy" and "space cadet"... but my point is that leaders, regardless of skill, don't put the engine on idle until they know for damn sure where they need to be and how a play is developing. To your point, a quick head check is all that was required... the mature learning lesson is that you do that head check before you tell your feet it's ok to stop moving.
 

frag2

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Mar 8, 2006
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Took a gander at the numbers. In all situations, with 97 and 29 on the ice, the Oilers have outscored the opposition by 44 goals. With the two of them off ice, they've been outscored by 38. 5v5? +11 with, -21 without. They're doing their jobs, maybe the rest of these bums could try doing theirs.

Nah gotta target only the stars.
 

Little Fury

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What’s the difference? They’ve been throwing games for weeks as it is. They all have to start playing the right way at some point if there’re ever.

The Oilers have literally one line that ourscores the opposition. If they're playing the wrong way, well, it's not showing.
 
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FlameChampion

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It says a lot about the team that McDavid and Drai have to be basically flawless on both sides of the puck for the team to have a hope in hell of pulling out a win because no one else is capable of picking up the slack.

Basically the team is expected to outwork the other team due to a lack of a talent because of the choices made by ownership/management/obc, etc
 

Drivesaitl

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This thread has taken a turn of emotional reaction gone sideways. When you find yourself selectively blaming one of the top two teams players, and one of the very best players in the league for the teams misfortunes its quite clearly perceptive distortion.

We're all frustrated with the team. As others have mentioned lets focus on whats really wrong with this team, roster, and org. 70% of the lineup is not good enough to win at this level. That is the story. People focus on the stars of the team, or the goaltending because that's where there eyes are fixated. When the vast majority of the other players are failing most of the season little attention is paid to that. Those results are relatively sight unseen. Yet this club invariably losses in depth. That's where we usually get beat.
 
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McDNicks17

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Look, there is a hazy line between "lazy" and "space cadet"... but my point is that leaders, regardless of skill, don't put the engine on idle until they know for damn sure where they need to be and how a play is developing. To your point, a quick head check is all that was required... the mature learning lesson is that you do that head check before you tell your feet it's ok to stop moving.

It's just blatantly a defensive breakdown by basically everyone on the ice.



Klefbom commits too far to the right, McDavid is slow to get back which forces Klefbom over to the right even more, McDavid ends up in no-man's land puck watching at the blueline and because of all of that movement, Leon is now forced to cover for the left defenseman, but he's late recognizing that.

Players make mistakes. When basically every player on the ice makes a mistake, bad things happen.
 
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Little Fury

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Basically the team is expected to outwork the other team due to a lack of a talent because of the choices made by ownership/management/obc, etc

They don't even have the roster for that. Half the roster doesn't even belong in the NHL.

xxxx-McDavid-Drai
xxxx-RNH-xxxx
xxxx-xxxx-Chiasson
Lucic-Kharia-Kassian

Klefbom-xxxx
Nurse-Larsson
Russell-xxxx

xxxx
Koskinen/Talbot

8 pieces short.
 

Drivesaitl

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Look, there is a hazy line between "lazy" and "space cadet"... but my point is that leaders, regardless of skill, don't put the engine on idle until they know for damn sure where they need to be and how a play is developing. To your point, a quick head check is all that was required... the mature learning lesson is that you do that head check before you tell your feet it's ok to stop moving.

But again this is specious. Drai is one of the best forwards we have at picking up the trailer, or Defensive responsibility or covering back for a D. His willingness to do this is clear every game. Looks like I have to get back to pointing out the instances when this occur. It happened multiple times even in the game in question, but I don't have it PVRed.

You pick out one example in a game where the Oilers made countless mistakes as a team, and where no one, even McD, was engaged and your answer = Draisaitl ;)

That's what this thread is reading like.

Finally, Drai is in a unique position on this club. he would be the leader on many other clubs in the NHL but he isn't on this one because McDavid.

But more to the point all of Lucic, Larsson, McD, Nuge, even Eberle and Ference had letters on this team. Drai never has had. just saying.

This is the most disrespected top player in the league. Only Laine comes close to getting the fan scorn (for some reason) that Draisaitl gets.
 

bucks_oil

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This is specious. The slowest skater to the bench we have is RNH and its resulted in multiple two many men on the ice penalties. But its odd (and I'm not doing it) to hilite either as both players show a tendency to stay out on the ice until its clear to change. i.e. both have an established tendency to make sure puck is deep in other end before effecting a line change.

Leon is destroying the team culture now?

Holy crap, something in the water this morning. These are some strange posts.

If you want to make a point about RNH, be my guest. Drai is certainly not the only guy that coasts to the bench. It's "a thing" with our team and it has never been acceptable on any team I ever played on, so it's odd to notice it so obviously at the NHL level.

Leon destroying team culture? Nobody has said that. This team hasn't had any team culture, save for a brief period in 2017, since 2006. What's to destroy?

I'm just waiting for true leadership... the type that propagates positively with teammates... to re-establish itself. Drai is an intelligent player who cares... he could easily be that guy, but that was not a "Patrice Bergeron" type of play.
 

Raoul Duke

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Feb 21, 2010
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This is specious. The slowest skater to the bench we have is RNH and its resulted in multiple two many men on the ice penalties. But its odd (and I'm not doing it) to hilite either as both players show a tendency to stay out on the ice until its clear to change. i.e. both have an established tendency to make sure puck is deep in other end before effecting a line change.

Leon is destroying the team culture now?

Holy crap, something in the water this morning. These are some strange posts.

Draisaitl, because he’s one of the best players on the team has to play perfect and %100 engaged at all times.
If he doesn’t, all the terrible players on the team are justified in letting their effort sag as well.

Some might think that the lesser players might feel they should up their efforts to support the 3 guys that carry the team on their backs offensively every night.

But that’s crazy talk. ;)

It’s clearly Draisaitl’s character issues.
 
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Drivesaitl

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It's just blatantly a defensive breakdown by basically everyone on the ice.



Klefbom commits too far to the right, McDavid is slow to get back which forces Klefbom over to the right even more, McDavid ends up in no-man's land puck watching at the blueline and because of all of that movement, Leon is now forced to cover for the left defenseman, but he's late recognizing that.

Players make mistakes. When basically every player on the ice makes a mistake, bad things happen.


Exactly, and thank you. My first look at that is where is the left side D, where did they vacate to and how often does this serially occur on this team (lots)

The key is the bolded.
that's all it is. Its not about not trying, about being lazy, giving up. Its about a late read in the fastest game on the planet. I also think he didn't pick up Kane who maybe even came in on a line change. Anybody got the full back up on that play? Would be nice to see replays with all ice so you could pick up stuff like that.

The game looks easy on our cozy coaches with camera views that are looking down on the action and in SLOW MOTION. Not the same as being there.
 

bucks_oil

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Aug 25, 2005
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It's just blatantly a defensive breakdown by basically everyone on the ice.



Klefbom commits too far to the right, McDavid is slow to get back which forces Klefbom over to the right even more, McDavid ends up in no-man's land puck watching at the blueline and because of all of that movement, Leon is now forced to cover for the left defenseman, but he's late recognizing that.

Players make mistakes. When basically every player on the ice makes a mistake, bad things happen.


I think that's an absolutely accurate description. I don't disagree with a word of what you've said there.

But on our 2006 team, it would have been Pisani busting his butt back into the play first to see if there was a teammate he could cover for who might have blown his coverage. THEN he would have curled back toward the blue line to pick up "his" guy on the point once and if the opponent had sustained pressure in our zone.

It's the difference between satisfying the scripted requirements of your job vs being in great position to support the (I agree sometimes unavoidable) mistakes of a teammate.
 

bucks_oil

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Aug 25, 2005
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Draisaitl, because he’s one of the best players on the team has to play perfect and %100 engaged at all times.
If he doesn’t, all the terrible players on the team are justified in letting their effort sag as well.

Some might think that the lesser players might feel they should up their efforts to support the 3 guys that carry the team on their backs offensively every night.

But that’s crazy talk. ;)

It’s clearly Draisaitl’s character issues.

I want it from everyone. Leaders first. I don't care if our leaders are our best guys or our talentless hacks, as long was we have some that others will follow.
 
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Drivesaitl

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If you want to make a point about RNH, be my guest. Drai is certainly not the only guy that coasts to the bench. It's "a thing" with our team and it has never been acceptable on any team I ever played on, so it's odd to notice it so obviously at the NHL level.

Leon destroying team culture? Nobody has said that. This team hasn't had any team culture, save for a brief period in 2017, since 2006. What's to destroy?

I'm just waiting for true leadership... the type that propagates positively with teammates... to re-establish itself. Drai is an intelligent player who cares... he could easily be that guy, but that was not a "Patrice Bergeron" type of play.


I agree that the casual skates to the bench issue is a team thing, its been addressed, several times. For Drai, and McD, as much as any players its due to being gassed half the time and at the end of shifts. Theres several players on this team that don't even work up a sweat.

Bergeron? Bruins?


Lets be a little fair here. Bergeron is 33, playing on a SC calibre team and with D like Chara and a supporting cast of players playing the right way that have his back.

Drai is 23, playing on a lol team where anytime he makes a mistake half the time the D are out of position behind him, the goaltending suspect, and the red light flashing.

Drai is a good possession player that advances puck well, is key on this team in transition (we lack any pmd) and has so many critical roles on this club. Now even being its top goal scorer when he's not winning faceoffs, setting up 10 chances a night, playing PP, pk, too many minutes etc.

But my lord, a 23yr old German hockey player isn't Pavel Datsyuk yet. Lets stop the presses and scratch him (as some are suggesting in this thread) until he gets it right..(sarcasm)

ps destroying team culture. That was your segue comment, in your post, in context after a paragraph in which you critiqued draisaitl. You're a good writer, nor was that arrangement in your post accidental. You made the inference, clearly.
 

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