The change of coach, the improvement of the goal have saved the season for the Oilers

About halfway through the 2021-22 season, it looked like the Edmonton Oilers were on the verge of another top-tier year. Connor McDavid Y Leon Draisaitl down the toilet. After being eliminated from the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs a year ago, the Oilers were in the playoff bubble, had the same flaws that had existed for much of the previous five years, and didn’t seem to have much urgency in fix any of them.

The team seemed stuck under former coach Dave Tippett, they weren’t getting the goal they needed, and everything on the team depended on McDavid and Draisaitl dragging him as far as they could.

Then, in early February, things started to change.

That’s when Jay Woodcroft replaced Tippett and the Oilers immediately started playing like a team with two megastars should.

Under Woodcroft, the Oilers are 21-8-3 entering Wednesday’s game against the Dallas Stars and are not only playoff insurance, but will likely earn home-field advantage in the first round against (presumably) Los Angeles Kings. . That’s a pretty dramatic change in a short period of time, with only one major season change listed (the signing of Evander Kane).

So what has changed the Oilers’ outlook so much?

Let’s start with the simplest, and the first thing you can almost always look at when a team sees a sudden change in their results: Goaltending.

The Oilers began the season with the same goalkeeping duo from a year ago in Mike Smith Y mikko koskinen. He was risky, curious and not exactly ideal given the amount of goalkeeping talent available this offseason. And during the first part of the season, it was exactly the problem that was expected.

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But in the last couple of weeks, Smith has fired up and is undefeated in his last six starts with a pair of shutouts. In his last 10 starts he is 8-1-1 with a .940 save percentage. As a team, the Oilers have a .912 save percentage in all situations with Woodcroft (fourth-best in the NHL) and a .922 5-on-5 mark (seventh-best in the NHL).

Under Tippett, those numbers were .896 (25) and .912 (26), respectively.

That’s a pretty significant difference. You are going to win a lot of hockey games with that level of goalkeeping no matter what your general level of talent is. Throw in the duo McDavid and Draisaitl and you really have something to build on.

The change in goal is probably the most impactful change for the Oilers, but it’s not the only change.

The other big adjustment under Woodcroft is the way he has balanced the team lines, giving McDavid, Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (when healthy) his own lines. In years past, the Oilers always played McDavid and Draisaitl together, or played Nugent-Hopkins at fullback with one of them. The result was a team that would play at the playoff level when one of the two superstars was on the ice and play like a lottery team when he wasn’t. When McDavid and Draisaitl played together, they were three different lines crushing each other every night and the goals for and against were terrible.

That has changed significantly under Woodcroft.

Under Tippett, the Oilers were being outscored 30-49 when neither McDavid nor Draisaitl were off the ice and 54-73 when McDavid was off the ice during a 5-on-5 game. among the worst in the league when it comes to complementary player performance.

Under Woodcroft, the Oilers’ goal differential without McDavid and Draisaitl has improved to 22-26 (much more manageable) and 46-41 without McDavid (pretty good). The Athletic’s Allan Mitchell delved into this improvement on Wednesday. You can read about it here (subscription required).

The bottom line for the Oilers is this: After struggling to make the playoffs, or being unable to do anything once they got there, during the early part of the McDavid-Draisaitl era, for the first time they look like a team that has a opportunity. to do something real. Especially with a likely First Round matchup against a Kings team that has very little defense. Get past that, you could be looking at a Battle of Alberta in Round Two with Calgary where anything could happen.

The Oilers still have some flaws and question marks that will eventually need to be addressed in the offseason and beyond. The back six and defense leave a lot to be desired, and there’s no guarantee Smith will continue his recent pace. But Woodcroft seems to have found line combinations that work for his superstars, injected new life into the team structurally and systematically, and with a better goal, they suddenly look like a team to watch in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. That’s not something we’ve said about the Oilers in a long time.

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