Oilers not as skilled as they think
When opposing players are interrogated about the Edmonton Oilers, their response is always the same.
“Lots of skill, fast, they can score.”
It’s like name, rank and serial number. Rote reply.
Not sure what Oilers team they’ve been watching, but take away those 96 goals from Leon Draisaitl, Connor McDavid, Alex Chiasson and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and nobody else scores. Oilers coach Ken Hitchcock said the consistency of scoring on the left side has “fallen off a cliff,” which is why Draisaitl was on the left wing with McDavid in Minnesota Thursday.
The real story is this: the coach knows he has to get his team to understand what they really are — a team that has to check and play determined to win hockey games. They ticked both those boxes in Minnesota and they won. These Oilers do not have a lot of skill and they can’t get into a track meet with the likes of the San Jose Sharks, who they face Saturday, because they’ll get kicked in the shins. They tried that the last two games against the Sharks and how did it work out? 7-4. 7-2. Drubbings.
At the same time, while we should be applauding the Oilers’ work in Minnesota on Thursday from first to last shift, Wild coach Bruce Boudreau was apoplectic at his own team’s will and skill on display in the 4-1 Edmonton win.
One of Minnesota’s core guys, Mikael Granlund, has two goals in his last 37 games. Fans would like to run him out of town.
The real test will be against the Sharks, who just defeated Winnipeg and Calgary on the road. Hitchcock said they can’t dance with the Sharks and he’s right. Here’s a look at three other things:
OSCAR IS NO SLOUCH
Oscar Klefbom is the second-most indispensable player after McDavid, with apologies to Draisaitl and those 32 goals (eight in the last six games) and 66 points. When Klefbom was out for those 21 games with a busted finger, the Oilers were 6-15. His partner Adam Larsson looked as lost as a husband trying to buy shoes for his wife. He was minus-12 over that stretch and fully admitted he was a shadow of his usual sturdy, shutdown self.
To hear Hitchcock talk about Klefbom when he was out, you’d have thought he was talking about Drew Doughty meets Victor Hedman, which seemed a bit of a reach. But Klefbom is the guy who would be playing against McDavid if he were on a different team.
He played 24-plus minutes against the Wild, closing fast on puck-carriers, getting to loose pucks and moving it north, and he still has one of the most effective, heavy sticks in the league when he’s checking. He has made Larsson whole again and his return has allowed the head coach not to overwork Darnell Nurse (nine games of 28 or more minutes) and Kris Russell, where extra ice was meaning extra mistakes because they were playing above their station.
Klefbom isn’t yet a true No. 1 defenceman in this league — there’s only about 12 to 15 of those — but he’s close.
RATTIE COULD BE A FIRST-LINER
Ty Rattie has a shorter leash with Hitchcock than other players because the coach had him in St Louis, where Rattie teased his offensive ability — just not on a regular basis. Hitchcock kept wanting more and Rattie found himself more on the fourth line than the first or second lines or sitting out. When he played briefly in Carolina after that, he couldn’t find his form, either.
No more doghouse. On an Oilers team with so little natural offence, he deserves a nightly shot with the big boys, just like Chiasson did early on and ran with it. Rattie works well with McDavid and Draisaitl or with his childhood friend Nugent-Hopkins.
The coach is right when he says the right-winger doesn’t always move his feet or has to skate as hard from the red-line back as he does the other way, but he’s not alone there. There’s no way he should be a healthy scratch 14 times. McDavid likes playing with him, likes how he thinks the game offensively. So does Nugent-Hopkins.
Keep Rattie playing and not on a fourth line. Stick with him even if he makes a mistake. He’s not lighting it up, but has one more point (10 points to nine) than Jesse Puljujarvi in 10 fewer games and Puljujarvi has played every game since Nov. 25, a total of 32 in a row. Rattie is minus-1, Puljujarvi is minus-13.
Which, of course, brings us to Jesse ...
DOESN’T PULJUJARVI BELONG IN BAKERSFIELD?
This is baffling stuff. He was playing right wing with Colby Cave and Tobias Rieder in the win over Minnesota. He got 81/2 minutes, missing some time when he got a stick in the face.
Hitchcock pushed hard to bring him up from the American Hockey League when he was hired in mid-November, but Puljujarvi has played on the fourth line for weeks now.
That would be fine for, say, Jack Roslovic, another first-round pick in Winnipeg, because the Jets have a juggernaut roster and that’s where he fits. Roslovic has outgrown the AHL.
Puljujarvi has not done that in Bakersfield in two trips there.
It’s like he skipped elementary school.
There are precious few shifts where he takes over and you go “wow.” He works and steals passes with his long reach, but there’s no offensive juice in his limited ice time. Hitchcock said he’s trying to keep his minutes to 10-12 a night in the NHL because he feels the kid runs out of energy after that, which seems odd for somebody who is 20, not 35. But the coach is trying to manage the asset.
We get that.
The numbers scream at you, though. Puljujarvi has three goals on 34 shots in the last 32 games.