OILERS ON SIDE WITH MOVES
Players content with team’s direction
It’s been a tough summer for Edmonton Oilers fans, mainly because it’s no easy thing to grasp the swap of two utterly different players, offensive dynamo Taylor Hall for defensive stalwart Adam Larsson.
Oilers fans have been picking through every little quote this summer, trying to make sense.
Things started to boil on this front in late July, when Swedish hockey writer Ola Winther interviewed Oilers defenceman Oscar Klefbom, then tweeted out the following: “Talked with Klefbom who likes the Larssontrade: ‘Hall never played his best games against the tough teams.’ … It should be said that Oscar also told me that Hall had been their best player for the last five years … He also said that Hall was great against the weaker teams and that he didn’t play his best against the tougher ones.
After a huge uproar came a second tweet from Winther to clarify matters: “Got a Klefbom update for you: Talked with Oscar again and he wanted to add to his previous statements. First and foremost Klefbom said: ‘All of our key players underperformed, including myself. Not only Taylor Hall.’”
Klefbom’s clarification proved to be the fair and accurate comment here. My Cult of Hockey colleague Bruce McCurdy dug in and found that in 45 games against playoff-bound teams last season, Hall had 34 points, 0.76 points per game.
In 37 games against non-playoff teams, he had 30 points, 0.81 points per game. So Hall had a slight drop-off in scoring production against better teams.
I found the same. Hall contributed to fewer scoring chances and made more mistakes on scoring chances against when he faced playoff bound teams last year, but his dropoff wasn’t as big as the dropoff I found with Connor McDavid and with Klefbom himself.
Hall went from +3.4 scoring chances per game against nonplayoff teams to +2.7 against playoff teams. But McDavid dropped more, +3.3 per game against bad teams to +2.1 per game against good teams. Klefbom was +0.6 scoring chances against bad teams, but fell to -0.7 against good teams.
In mid-August came another quote of interest, this from Adam Larsson’s former teammate, Cory Schneider, New Jersey’s outstanding goalie, who raved about the defenceman in an interview with Chris Ryan of NJ.com: “He really committed himself to playing as tough a defence as he could. As a goaltender, as a player, you appreciated the style of game he played ... It’s hard to replicate that, you don’t find players like that very easily. That’s why Edmonton had to give up such a good player to get him.”
Last week a few more Oilers players weighed in, first Connor McDavid talking to Canadian Press: “Of course losing Taylor is a big loss but you add in a guy (Milan Lucic) that is probably one of the toughest guys in the league, if not the toughest guy in the league. And add in a defenceman like Larsson, I think (he’s) pretty underrated. You don’t know how good he is until you’ve actually played against him on the ice.”
Next, Oilers centre Mark Letestu spoke with the Journal’s Jim Matheson: “I know there’s a certain attachment fans have with Taylor … he was the light, part of the players who were going to take us to the playoffs. But for me, I think we got better … I think we got what we needed. For years the narrative’s been we had to be tougher on the back end and we accomplished that in the summer.”
Finally, last Thursday, Bob Nicholson, Oilers Entertainment Group CEO, spoke with Bob Stauffer on Oilers Now: “We needed a defenceman. We haven’t made the playoffs, it’s 10 years. Let’s be clear. So we had to make some changes. It was very difficult. We feel this is going to be much better for our hockey team. And Taylor, I think Taylor is going to go there, he’s going to learn from this situation, and he’s going to be better in a lot of different ways, and we really wish Taylor all the best.”
It’s no surprise to see players and management lining up behind the moves Edmonton made. They’re all on the same team and conformity is expected.
That said, the players are sounding more than OK with the direction of the team. For what it’s worth, they’re sounding chipper and not exactly broken up about Hall moving out and Larsson moving in.
If Cory Schneider is correct, that feeling may well spread to fans still struggling with the controversial deal.