There isn't exactly a lot to like here. 42.5% for the team is truly awful and other than the trio of Hemsky-Horcoff-Penner it was truly a team effort with some guys really standing out and given the Oilers record over these ten games I don't mind bringing some guys out for flogging. Part of the reason for the decline is the split of home and road games. In the Oilers first ten game segment they played three games on the road and seven at home. In this ten game segment that's reversed with seven road games and three at home. But that doesn't excuse some of these numbers.
In the last ten-game segment I noted that Ladislav Smid's improved performance may have had something to do with being partnered with Lubomir Visnovsky. Now, Visnovsky was off in the last few games in terms of chances but nothing compared to Smid. In the two games that Visnovsky missed in this segment Smid's scoring chances were +3 -17. Now, it's just two games but that's pretty bad. I am now in "wait and see" mode with Smid but I've come to the firm conclusion that if the Oilers decide on a defender to trade they should make sure to pair him with Visnovsky for twenty games (or even longer if possible) before making the deal. They could probably use Visnovsky to sucker someone into believing that one of their young D is much better than he actually is. Pump and dump baby.
Fernando Pisani is done. He looked done in training camp and although the colitis is apparently flaring up, his performance in the six games he played this season wasn't any better than camp. He's not coming close to breaking even. A sad story to be sure, but I think we may be in Fernando's final season as an NHL player.
Speaking of bad the Moreau-Stortini pairing is a black hole of suck. On top of getting completely mauled in the chances department they've also both taken quite a few minor penalties, more than one every two games between them. It is just so bad. That the center on their line doesn't win faceoffs just adds to the carnage. One guy some observers have liked is Gilbert Brule but he's another guy under the 40% barrier. And these guys play every night! This team needs to get some forward depth that can actually play in the NHL. I realize that you shouldn't expect your third and fourth even strength lines to be breaking even but these guys aren't even close. We. Need. Help.
On to the season totals for the first twenty games:
That's a lot of bad right there. Say what you will about Mike Comrie, there aren't too many guys on this list that crack 50% and he's finding a way. My guess is that he's got a knack for finding scoring areas and getting unblocked shots toward the goal. Getting him back from illness should help this club.
Jason Strudwick's expanded role at even strength hasn't been a good idea. He was bad last year and he's done even worse so far this season. Some of that is his being forced into more difficult ice time, some of it is being put with a rookie for almost all of it but a lot of it is that Jason Strudwick isn't a good enough hockey player although, judging from his four game call-up, Theo Peckham is actually even worse.
Certainly one of the issues facing the Oilers is health. Through the first twenty games only six players actually played in all of them: Gagner (who has since sat out), Cogliano, Penner, Stortini, O'Sullivan and Gilbert. That's a ton of regulars sitting out and no team is going to deal perfectly with that. That's really the only encouraging thing to say. The team is playing with a depleted lineup and getting smoked. I personally don't believe that they'll be a good team when the players get healthy but, right now, mediocre would be a substantial improvement.
6 comments:
Looking at the habs chances for the first 20 games, I was pretty happy to see that, team-wide and at the player level, Corsi% and SC% are following each others. What I found more interesting was how Zonsetarts% related to Corsi% and SC%. Some guys need and awful lot of OZoneStarts to keep a positive Corsi and SC% (Mara and Bergeron are the most notables), while others have over 50% Corsi and SC while hovering around 46% OZF-offs (Hamrlik & Spacek, but Gorges is pretty darn impressive too). I wonder up to which point these are really correlated; at the end of the day, it's really just me looking at percentages and speculating.
3 other guys showed a Corsi/SC% fairly higher than their ZoneStart%; Moen, Latendresse and Lapierre. Third liners who don't play the tough opponents but also have their ice-time cut when the habs are trailing in the third (that is, all the time), which means they can't pad their ZoneStarts & Corsi against an opponent turtling around its crease.
Have I just been staring at my screen for too long? Well, actually, I have, but am I hallucinating?
great stuff Scott although very frightening
So its a one line team. And the D are pretty solid, two in the black and I think a case could be made that if there was anything going on up front that 77, 37, 24 and 5 might be in the range too, although that might just be my rose coloured glasses.
We need some forwards, stat!
Maybe they can cobble together a line from Comrie and Gagner and then a fourth line with Reddox and Potulny but wow its a mess.
Yeah, the team really has no depth at forward. I think the problem is that management was likely counting on Moreau and Pisani to carry a line before the season and those guys are dragging lines down more than propping them up. Beyond that you have a bunch of kids who don't have much in the way of a track record of success with this stuff and AHL callups.
The other guy that's been disappointing is O'Sullivan. He hasn't been able to stir the drink with anyone outside of the top 3 and he's getting the kind of money that he needs to be able to make a line go. And he can't. Too much money is going to forwards who can't take linemate lemons and make a line of lemondade.
I had a thought about 91 the other day that he would be a perfect/cost effective fit in a role like Filuppula and Samuellsson used to play for the Wings.
Det would have Datsyuk and Zberg playing PVP and then the aforementioned two would come on and eat up the other team's complimentry lines.
So, for that to happen on the Oil, a sextet that could play top two tough min would have to be compiled from 10-27-19-83-89 plus some help from outside.
Is that 13? Who really knows.
But we might be able to build a secondary scoring line or even a tertiary scoring line from say the 91-67 combo and then you perhaps flesh it out with some size in 22 because I know 22-67 have shown some chem and those two could bang while 91 playmakes.
But, all of this hinges on us using the aforementioned guys in PVP roles.
Yikes - that's a brutal shift for Brule.
Moreau and Strudwick really dragging down everyone they play with . . . . Though in the last few games, both have played better, not that I have much hope over the long-term for either of them, not unless Moreau's foot injury really was the cause of his atrocious play.
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