Edmonton Oilers

What the Quant Says

290 goals, 7th in the league, off 2.816 expected goals per 60 at even strength — 9th.

At five-on-five it scored 181 against an expectation of 178.3. The finishing was 17th and neutral. What separates this offence is not conversion; it is the power play, which produced 8.509 expected goals per 60 — the best rate in the league and 0.43 clear of Toronto in second.

Connor McDavid had 44 goals and 79 assists, with 3.22 even-strength points per 60 at the 96th percentile and 36 per cent of his points on the man advantage. Leon Draisaitl scored 55 on 278 shots at 19.8 per cent — of the fifty-one men who scored thirty, only four converted at a higher rate — with 24 of them on the power play.

Zach Hyman scored 27 from a median of 15 feet, the 5th-closest shot chart of the 393 qualified forwards, with 70 per cent of his attempts from the slot. Evander Kane scored 22 in 43 games off 10.90 shots per 60, the 95th percentile — the highest volume on the club.

Kailer Yamamoto scored 20 on 114 shots — 17.5 per cent at the 92nd percentile, off the 46th-fewest shots per 60 of 393. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins took 46 per cent of his points on the power play, the 4th-highest share in the league.

Evan Bouchard's 7.67 shots per 60 is the 5th-most of the 202 qualified defencemen and Darnell Nurse's 6.85 the 13th. Between them, 408 shots from the blue line.

What the Scout Says

McDavid does not shoot from range; he arrives. Sixty-five per cent from the slot at a median of nineteen feet, and he handles the puck more than anyone on the ice and the ledger is positive.

Draisaitl holds the puck a very long time and converts at a rate almost nobody who scores thirty matches. Fifty-five goals and a fifty-per-cent chance share is a strange pair of numbers to find on one page, and the resolution is that the power play is where he is unstoppable and even strength is where the club needs someone else on his wing.

Hyman covers very little ground and sprints constantly over it — short, hard, straight-line shifts to a spot in front of the net, at 15 feet.

Kailer Yamamoto at 5-9 and 178 pounds gets to the paint as reliably as anybody, which is where a 17.5 per cent conversion rate on very few shots comes from.

Kane is fast and he does not cover much ground — a straight-line power forward at the highest shot volume on the club.

Puljujarvi's volume is good and the finishing is not, and that gap is the whole of the case against him. The locations are right: nine per cent of a season's shots going in from those places is a bad year rather than a bad shooter.

Below them the fourth line does not shoot. Derek Ryan is not beating anyone; he is standing where the puck is. Janmark shoots from the paint or not at all. A shot as soft as Ryan McLeod's is not a scoring tool and the club does not treat it as one.

What the Quant Says

252 goals against, 16th in the league — off 2.676 expected goals against per 60 at even strength, 20th. Middling at both, on a club that was ninth at creating.

At five-on-five it conceded 173 against an expectation of 169.6.

Darnell Nurse played 25:03 a night, the 95th percentile among defencemen, at 53.1 per cent of the chances, with 2:45 short-handed at the 89th. His 100.0 mph is the 16th-hardest recorded shot of the 192 defencemen the tracking covers.

With Evan Bouchard he took 58.2 per cent of the chances over 1,038 attempts and 50.2 without him. That is the best pairing on the club and both men are better in it.

Cody Ceci is the file the reputation misses: 20:54 a night, 2:34 short-handed at the 83rd percentile, and fourteen penalty minutes in seventy-eight games — the 5th-fewest penalties drawn and the 8th percentile for penalties taken among the 202 qualified defencemen. With Duncan Keith he took 46.4 per cent over 906 attempts and 54.0 without; Keith is off the roster.

Tyson Barrie's 1.17 hits per 60 is the 6th-fewest of 202 and he killed 0:23 a night, the 12th percentile. There is no defensive game there and the club has never asked for one.

Brett Kulak sprints and covers ground at the 94th and 89th percentiles among defencemen and blocks at the 22nd-fewest of 202 — a fifth defenceman whose skating file says he should be higher.

Ryan Murray arrives with 37 games and no goals; Philip Broberg has 23 NHL games and Markus Niemeläinen 20. The seventh and eighth defencemen on a conference finalist have 43 games between them.

What the Scout Says

Darnell Nurse is not a point shooter in the ordinary sense; he walks in, and he is not a top-end sprinter; he is constantly at the top of the range he has — which at 6-4 and twenty-five minutes a night is the more useful of the two.

The penalties are the part of his file that would decide a series, and nothing in it is going to make them go away.

Evan Bouchard has the puck constantly and he loses it constantly, which is what a 22-year-old carrying that much of the offence produces. This is a pure point shot taken at enormous volume with a very hard release, and both the 43 points and the 97th-percentile giveaway rate come out of the same habit.

Tyson Barrie is a point shooter, and a busy one. There is no defensive game here at all and the club does not ask for one.

Cody Ceci is the surprise of the chapter: nothing happens around him in either direction, and all twenty-eight of his points came at even strength and short-handed. On a club whose top defenceman took fifty-four penalty minutes and whose top winger took sixty in forty-three games, a top-four man who takes fourteen is worth more than the reputation allows.

Brett Kulak defends by moving, not by standing in the way, and he sprints and covers ground at a rate almost no third-pair defenceman does.

Markus Niemeläinen's reach is the whole argument for a 6-5 defenceman and nothing in this repo measures it.

What the Quant Says

17th in the league at minus-3.4 goals against the chances faced — spread across four goaltenders, none of whom played fifty games.

Mikko Koskinen went .9026 in 45 games and Mike Smith .9153 in 28. Both are off the roster. That is 73 games of a crease gone in one summer.

Jack Campbell arrives from Toronto with a .9140 across 49 games and 1,430 shots — 17th of the 53 goaltenders who played 25 games or more. The career record is 135 games and a .9162 across seven seasons, most of them as a backup: 22 games at .9214 in 2020-21 and 49 last season are the whole of the evidence that he can carry one.

Toronto conceded 253 goals and Edmonton 252 — the workload is not the change. What changes is that Toronto killed penalties at the 4th-best rate in the league and Edmonton at the 27th.

Stuart Skinner returns with a .9128 across 13 games and 367 shots, and a career .9086 over fourteen. At 367 shots the confidence interval is wide enough to contain both a starter and a career backup, and this is a 23-year-old who is now the only other goaltender on the roster.

A club that reached the conference final has replaced its entire crease with a 30-year-old who has 71 starter's games and a 23-year-old who has thirteen.

What the Scout Says

Jack Campbell is 6-3 and 200, at the size the position now selects for.

Nothing in this repo measures a goaltender's glove, his push, his rebound control or how deep he plays. What it has is shots and goals, and 1,430 shots is a real sample. Two seasons as a number one, both good and neither long, is the whole of the evidence that he can carry one.

Stuart Skinner is 6-4 and 215, which is large even by the standard the position now sets. At 367 shots the confidence interval around .9128 is wide enough to contain both a starter and a career backup.

He is 23, from Edmonton, drafted by Edmonton, and the backup on a club that went to the conference final. If the .9128 is real, Edmonton has a goaltender for a decade; if it is thirteen games, the club has a backup and a problem it has not solved.

The club has bet a conference finalist's crease on a 30-year-old with 71 starter's games and a 23-year-old with thirteen, and the numbers say that is a bet rather than a solution.

What the Quant Says

1st in the league at 8.509 expected goals per 60, over 4:37 a night — the best rate in hockey and only 19th in power-play time, which is the interesting half: this unit did more with less ice than any club in the league.

Leon Draisaitl took 3:50 a night, the 98th percentile among forwards, with 37 per cent of his points there and 24 power-play goals. Connor McDavid took 3:43 at the 97th with 36 per cent of his.

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins took 3:28 at the 94th percentile — and 46 per cent of his points came on it, the 4th-highest share of the 393 qualified forwards. Twenty-three of his fifty points. Strip the man advantage out and a 50-point season becomes a third-line one.

Tyson Barrie ran the second unit at 2:52, the 91st percentile among defencemen, with 51 per cent of his points on it — the 4th-highest share of 202.

The forwards who are not on it are the ones worth naming. Evander Kane took 10 per cent of his points on the power play and Jesse Puljujarvi 19; Kailer Yamamoto had 0:49 a night at the 31st percentile. Twenty-two goals, thirty-six points and twenty goals respectively, almost all of it at five-on-five.

Darnell Nurse takes 1:10 with 17 per cent of his points there. He is the first-pair defenceman and he is not on the first unit, which on a club with this power play is a deliberate and correct choice.

What the Scout Says

The best unit in hockey and the least complicated to describe: McDavid and Draisaitl on the half-walls, Nugent-Hopkins in the middle, Hyman at the net and Barrie or Bouchard at the point.

It did more with less ice than any club in the league — first in expected goals per 60 and 19th in power-play time.

Nugent-Hopkins is the man the unit carries. Forty-six per cent of his points came on it, the fourth-highest share in the league, on a 46.3 per cent five-on-five chance share. Strip the man advantage out and a 50-point season becomes a third-line one, and that is the most exposed production in this chapter.

Barrie is a power-play specialist who cannot defend, which is a real job on a club with the best power play in hockey. It is also the first job that disappears in a playoff series, and Edmonton played sixteen of those last spring.

Bouchard is the alternative and the argument for him is the shot — the fifth-most shots per 60 of any qualified defenceman, at 98.4 mph, from a man who is 22.

What the unit does not have is a net-front man other than Hyman, and Hyman's own shot chart says that is exactly where he already stands at five-on-five.

What the Quant Says

27th in the league at 7.428 expected goals against per 60, over 5:07 a night — the 11th-most short-handed time in the league and one of the worst results from it. On a club that was 1st on the power play, this is the whole of the special-teams argument.

The club takes too many penalties and then cannot kill them. Darnell Nurse's drawn minus taken is minus-0.61, the 10th percentile of the 202 qualified defencemen, with 54 penalty minutes in 71 games and 406 in a 477-game career. Evander Kane's is minus-0.789, the 7th-worst of the 393 qualified forwards, with 60 minutes in 43 games.

Those are the club's top-pair defenceman and its most productive winger, and between them they are why this unit is on the ice as often as it is.

The bones of the kill are Cody Ceci at 2:34 a night and Nurse at 2:45, with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins at 2:01, the 92nd percentile among forwards, and Zach Hyman at 1:47 and Derek Ryan at 1:43.

Nugent-Hopkins takes 2.12 takeaways per 60 at the 81st percentile against 1.68 giveaways — a good ledger, and the reason he kills. Derek Ryan took eight penalty minutes in seventy-five games at 35.

Mattias Janmark arrives having killed 1:11 a night. Nothing about the personnel has changed enough to move a 27th-ranked unit, and the discipline that feeds it has not changed at all.

What the Scout Says

The 27th-ranked kill in the league, and the two men most responsible for its workload are the club's best defenceman and its most productive winger.

Nurse gives up more power plays than almost any defenceman at his position and almost never earns one back. Kane's ledger is the 7th-worst of the 393 qualified forwards and he took sixty penalty minutes in forty-three games. On a club that killed at the 27th-best rate, that is a direct and measurable cost.

Nugent-Hopkins has a good turnover ledger, and that is the reason he kills — 2.12 takeaways per 60 at the 81st percentile. He is a positional defender rather than a contact one, which is the honest description of the whole unit.

Ceci kills 2:34 a night and takes almost nothing, which is the quietest and most valuable thing on the page.

Derek Ryan is not fast and he never stops moving, which is the oldest description of a checking centre and here it is measured — the 35th-most ground covered of the 365 forwards the tracking follows, at eleven and a half minutes a night. Eight penalty minutes in seventy-five games at 35.

Mattias Janmark arrives to do the same job. He has a high gear he uses rarely and covers very little ground the rest of the time, which is a different shape from Ryan's and lands in the same role.

Nothing about the personnel has changed enough to move this unit, and the discipline that feeds it has not changed at all.