February 12, 2022 by Ryan Lotsberg

General Manager Ken Holland fired Head Coach Dave Tippett on Thursday after the Edmonton Oilers were outscored 8-1 in the first two games after the All-Star break. The Oilers went 5-0-1 in the six games prior to the All-Star break, but they a dismal 2-11-2 stretch in the previous 13 games made it clear that a change was needed.

The orange and blue have struggled to score goals for a couple of months now. There are a lot of factors involved, but I want to focus on what’s happening in the offensive zone, or more specifically, what isn’t happening in the offensive zone.

I’m curious about how a team that features Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl that is supposedly number one in the league when it comes to possession in the offensive zone according to Tippett can struggle to score goals like the Oilers have recently.

A lot has been made about how the offence seems to run through the points. The defencemen aren’t hitting the net, and the Oilers aren’t getting traffic to the net when those shots are coming from the points. My observation is that they’re great at moving the puck and protecting it along the walls, but they can’t seem to generate shots from the slot.

I was in attendance for Wednesday’s game against Chicago. I had a great vantage point from the top of the upper bowl! I’ll break down two offensive zone shifts from the Chicago game.

The first is a shift from the second line of Evander Kane, Leon Draisaitl, and Kailer Yamamoto in the second period.

Kane made a brief appearance in the middle of the Chicago defenders, but you can see in the still image below that he was not in a dangerous shooting position. He wasn’t facing the net, and he was moving away from the net.

Draisaitl passed it to Darnell Nurse at the left point. Kane drifted to the slot, and Yamamoto was trying to screen the goalie. They had the right idea there, but the shot from Nurse was soft and right into Yamamoto’s shin pads. While Kane and Yamamoto were in the right spots, they were slow to get there and they were never dangerous.

The puck then went into the corner where Kane and Yamamoto both went to fight for it. Kane dumped it softly towards the net. Nobody was even inside of the faceoff dots when Kane put the puck at the net. 

Draisaitl was lucky to get the puck in the slot after a bounce off of Marc-Andre Fleury’s pads, and he blindly passed it into a crowd in front of the net. This crowd was notably void of Oilers skaters. The fans gasped, but there was no real scoring chance on that play.

Ultimately, if your shift looks like this for the majority of it, then it’s not good enough.

Warren Foegele, Ryan McLeod, and Jesse Puljujarvi had a much better shift later in the second period:

Tyson Barrie cut to the net from the right point as Foegele carried the puck to the point along the right half wall. While that was happening, Puljujarvi was fighting for position in front of the net. Puljujarvi was in between the faceoff dots for this entire sequence with the exception of when the puck was played behind the net late in the shift.

Foegele dropped the puck for Nurse at the point, and Nurse shot it high and wide. That’s a common trend for Oilers defencemen shooting from the point. That’s on them. They need to be better. McLeod won the race to the puck on the right half wall, and gave it to Foegele in the corner. He immediately went to the middle of the ice. Puljujarvi was also in the middle of the ice trying to be an option, even though he had two defenders covering him.

Foegele spun and took the puck hard to the net. Puljujarvi went hard to the net as well, and McLeod offered support higher in the zone, but still in the middle of the ice. 

Foegele then passed the puck to the left point, and Nurse passed it right back into the left corner. McLeod rotated below the net as Foegele came around the net, and he supported Puljujarvi down low. Foegele then cut to the net through the middle of the ice. 

The puck came to McLeod behind the net, and he tried to hit Foegele cutting through the slot. It was ultimately tipped and played out of the zone by Chicago.

This was a fantastic shift from that trio because they always had a presence in the middle of the ice. Barrie made it an even four players that cut through the middle of the ice at some point on that shift. Despite that, they were unable to get the puck into the slot at any point in time. The puck always stayed along the wall or at the point.

I haven’t been seeing that presence in the middle of the ice from Connor McDavid’s lines or Draisaitl’s lines recently. They’re great at maintaining possession along the walls, but they aren’t getting bodies or pucks into the middle of the ice. Not having any bodies in the middle of the ice means that the options are to cycle the puck behind the net or to move the puck to the point. The puck will always find its way to the point eventually if there are no passing options in the middle of the ice. If the defencemen aren’t getting pucks to hit the net, then that’s a recipe for disaster.

That’s what we’ve seen play out for the last couple of months. There have been other factors like puck luck, hitting posts, and running into hot goalies; but the Oilers need to find a way to get the puck into the slot. Getting bodies between the faceoff dots and hitting the net from the points are the ways out of this offensive funk.

I hope that Jay Woodcroft can find a way to get the forwards to get off of the walls and into the middle of the ice more often going forward.