Oilers wingers failing to take flight
Scoring weakness is most glaring along right flank, writes Jim Matheson.
Does Oilers coach Ken ST. LOUIS Hitchcock play pressure defence because he wants to or he has to?
It looks as if he has to and he’s only been on the job for eight games after replacing Todd McLellan, who knew this reality long before he was let go. This is not a team that can outscore its mistakes.
It’s a team that lives on the edge, going 9-3 in one-goal games, which is why they’re 14-12-2. They play hard, they totally overwhelmed St. Louis the last 40 minutes Wednesday and give them credit for battling back from a 2-0 hole. But their group of wingers hasn’t taken flight at all a third of the way down the 2018 NHL runway.
And while it hasn’t crippled their record, their offence has been limping and 28 games is no small sample size.
Hitchcock and his predecessor have squeezed as much as they can out of a team that might have the most offensively challenged group of wingers in the league.
All these one-goal games where the Oilers are either tied after 40 minutes or a goal behind are because that’s the only way Hitchcock thinks his team can win, even with the electric Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. Because save for the best free-agent signing in the league in Alex Chiasson and Drake Caggiula, who has the chops to maybe be a 20-goal guy down the road, no other forward scores.
There’s lots of try with these Oilers, who don’t take many nights off, forecheck industriously and now play zone defence in their end rather than the more man-to-man style employed by McLellan. But this is why Hitchcock is pumping the tires of his goalies Mikko Koskinen and Cam Talbot so vigorously.
“This is the strength of our team,” said Hitchcock, who has been around the NHL block many times and sees a flawed, top-heavy, maximum-cap team with three natural centres in McDavid, Draisaitl and NugentHopkins making $27 million, yet just one winger with 100 or more career goals.
After Milan Lucic’s 193 goals, Chiasson is next with 70.
This is on general manager Peter Chiarelli. Not Hitchcock nor McLellan, of course, and Chiarelli undoubtedly knows it. He made two astute moves bringing in Chiasson and signing Koskinen, but you could drive a truck through the holes on the wing.
Tons of will, but they would die for even a David Perron on the roster.
The ones currently there average 2.61 goals and they’ve been very healthy. Only five teams have produced less.
Edmonton’s weakness is right wing, of course. There’s no obvious first-liner who could get 30 goals a season. There’s no second-line right-winger who has a history of 20 goals every year.
Yeah, Jordan Eberle would look good there, even if he left in a salary dump.
It’s a major complication for Hitchcock, same as McLellan before him.
Hitchcock has no firm third line he can put out with any offensive juice, which means he ends up playing fourth-line centre Kyle Brodziak more than he should.
In an NHL where 351 players have at least three goals, which breaks down to about 11 a team, the Oilers have six: five forwards in McDavid, Draisaitl, NugentHopkins, Caggiula and Chiasson, along with defenceman Oscar Klefbom. They have five wingers — Ty Rattie (two), Jesse Puljujarvi (two), Lucic (one), Jujhar Khaira (one) and Zack Kassian (one) — with seven goals combined and the season is already a third over.