Optimization under Woodcroft

Team: 2021-22 Edmonton Oilers

Initial Creation Date: Jan. 9, 2022

Published: Jan. 9, 2022

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

The minimum in my eyes for the rest of the season is game 7 against Vegas in the second round. Get that far and I'd call this season more of a win than a loss. Anything past it is found money.

I read somewhere that the Oilers are six moves away from being a contender: truthfully, I think it's four with the Brown trade inclusive. Five if you want to split hairs regarding whether a coaching change counts. Two more top-four defencemen and a starting goaltender and this team has every right to throw its hat in the ring. The Oilers' biggest problem right now is a GM reluctant to do business. Futures for Chychrun is the exact kind of move Holland shouldn't be balking at. The other problem the Oilers have is the two fossils they have running their bench not understanding what they have at their disposal. Woodcroft and Manson should be replacing Tippett and Playfair immediately. Throw those goddamned "analytics" Tippett uses out with him too; NaturalStatTrick is right there, bugger off. Thus moving forward, optimizing this roster with what they have is the only way forward.

This top line runs at an xGF% of 73% with a CF% of 67%. Granted, we've only seen 31 shifts out of this trio and their PDO is 16% above average, but the numbers suggest that there could be magic here. They convert more than Foegele-McDavid-Puljujarvi with nearly identical shot metrics and this setup allows for the Draisaitl-Puljujarvi duo to keep plugging along in those high-50%'s. Adding Brown to that duo makes me think that Edmonton could run two of the top-10 lines in the league. Keep in mind that the pick returning to Edmonton in the Ottawa deal is either the Bruins' 3rd (late) or the earliest 4th rounder they obtain at the deadline. I think something outside the top-100 is closer in value, they just don't currently have *that* pick right now and I'm instead using a placeholder.

The bottom six is completely revamped: the chemistry Nuge showed with Hyman eludes to his working well with a defensively-apt partner (saw this with JP too). Yamamoto's been a bit of an odd duck this year and I saw a trade (KY and the '23 4th for KK) that I liked as much as the Pens fans in that thread did. Kapanen is the better player now and is arguably a better two-way type than the mighty mouse. Lack of the 2023 4th has lesser parts going east. For those asking, he's affordable up to $4M/4y in the summer. Marody would finally have a permanent place on the NHL roster with a head coach that actually values his skills over Ryan, Shore, and Turris' lack thereof, finally burying the identity of the Oilers' bottom-6 bleeding out on a nightly basis.

There is no big fix for the blueline or in net until the offseason given what we know from Kenny Holland: De Haan is simply a piece to push Keith down the roster. Duncan, at best, rotates in-and-out with Lagesson based on the quality of the opposing team: Keith-Barrie have phenomenal metrics when given very sheltered offensive-zone minutes while Lagesson-Barrie have great numbers in limited TOI. I think Lagesson the more stable man than Keith at this point in their careers and should get the better teams. Keith can ride pine for all I care. The Nurse-Ceci pairing has strong numbers (again, sample size alert) and both Bouchard and De Haan have strong individual numbers and skill sets that should compliment. Always have the flexibility to return to Nurse-Bouchard and push Ceci down a pairing. It's the kind of setup where you'd have to distribute the 5v5 ice time as evenly as possible and let the big dogs make up for it with special teams TOI. Given the lack of really good solutions for the blueline, the hope here is that the immense strength of the forwards can make up for the ho-hum blueline.

1.

2.

3.