December 13, 2022 by Mike Dirsa

Through 29 Games of the Edmonton Oilers’ 2022-23 Season, the have a 16-13-0 record and are positioned in third place in the Pacific Division. It’s not where the team expected to be at this point of the season, but there has still been plenty of positives.

The Good

Ryan Nugent Hopkins is producing at just over a point-per-game clip with 14 goals and 33 points in 29 games this year. Nugent-Hopkins is on pace for the best season of his 12-year NHL career. The 29-year-old had a career-best 69 points in 2019-20.

Zach Hyman, who is in his second season with the Oilers, is also scoring at just over a point per game pace, tallying nine goals and 29 points in 28 games. Hyman plays hard every night and he has proven to be the best winger to play with Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid when “The Dynamic Duo” is put together.

McDavid is off to a torrid start this year as well. He has a league-leading 55 points in 29 games, with 25 goals and 30 assists (he leads the NHL in both categories as well). The Oilers captain has been used on the penalty kill this season and scored a shorthanded breakaway goal in a 3-2 loss to the Washington Capitals on Wednesday.

Related: Can Connor McDavid win the Rocket Richard Trophy this season?

While he’s among the best passers in the league, McDavid has evolved his game to be more of a scoring threat himself, which is bad news for opposing goalies. The four-time scoring champion is looking to have a career year and carry this team back to the playoffs.

Leon Draisaitl is also having a career-year with 19 goals and 46 points. Draisaitl is just eight points behind McDavid, good for second in the league in scoring. The 27-year-old has continued to be a lethal force on the power-play with his patented impossible angle, one timers from anywhere on the left side. Draisaitl has many nicknames but maybe Lethal Leon should be another one.

Tyson Barrie is often the whipping boy on the Oilers defence, but through 29 games, he’s performed well for the most part. Barrie has four goals, including a pair against the Florida Panthers that helped seal a win on the road. The 30-year-old has also added 11 assists to those four goals for 15 points.

Many fans believe that with Evan Bouchard on the right side, Barrie is expendable but Barrie so far has been the better of the two both offensively and defensively. It’s true that Barrie has been given more powerplay time on the top unit but I think at this stage Barrie has more poise at the point. Bouchard had a tough stretch of games where he had a real problem getting shots through to the net. I think it’s an indictment of the Oilers when the only defencemen I want to put into the good category is Tyson Barrie but I will get to the bad and the ugly soon.

The Oilers power-play continues to be a force, as they lead the league at 30.7% with the man-advantage. The Oilers have a real shot of breaking the NHL record for most efficient power-play in NHL history, set by Montreal Canadiens in 1977-78 (31.9%).

Stuart Skinner has been a revelation this season. It didn’t make sense to me why Skinner never played again last season after a shutout win. I don’t begin to understand the inner workings of agents and management and everything behind the scenes but I think it was obvious that Skinner could play at the NHL level last year.

Skinner has posted a 9-7-0 record with a 2.76 goals against average and a .919 save percentage in 16 appearances. Skinner has taken the net from Jack Campbell, who has been part of the ugly, which I will get to later. The 24-year-old stopped 47 of 50 shots in his last appearance against the Washington Capitals. A game in which he was on a mission to single handedly get a win but the team in front of him let him down which leads me to the bad.

The Bad

Discipline or lack thereof has been a problem for the Edmonton Oilers this year. On many nights this team has taken the first penalty and it has led to powerplay goals for the opposition.

Poor starts are still a major issue with this group on most nights. We are through several different coaching regimes so I have a hard time accepting that this problem is coaching alone. This team seems to sleep walk their way through the first 10 minutes of hockey games before they start to play. Many times they are severely outshot after the first period ends. I’m not sure why they continue to play this way but it’s been a problem for a long time now.

Depth scoring is not where it needs to be. 15 forwards on this team have a combined 15 goals through 28 games. With Jesse Puljujarvi and Kailer Yamamoto combining for two goals. Yamamoto has had some injury ailments on the year but it’s still not good enough from the Puljujarvi, Yamamoto duo and the rest of the bottom six players. This team is too heavily reliant on the likes of Hyman, Nugent Hopkins, Draisaitl and McDavid to do all of the heavy lifting.

The Ugly

Campbell was signed in the offseason to a five year 25 million dollar contact by the Oilers and since coming in has been disappointing. Campbell has a winning record at 7 wins and 6 loses but has a 4.12 goals against average and .872 save percentage. He is well off his career save percentage and doesn’t look comfortable in the net. Campbell is 6’3″ but looks small in between the pipes and I think that’s from having a lack of confidence. He isn’t playing aggressive, at the top of his crease. As a result of his play Stuart Skinner has taken over as the Oilers starting goaltender. If there is a positive in Campbell’s play the only thing I can think of is it can only get better (I hope). Campbell was brought in to help stabilize the net and hasn’t done that so far.

Injuries are a part of professional sports that every team has to deal with but this season the injury bug has hit the Edmonton Oilers fairly hard and it all started with a ugly incident involving Evander Kane. On November 8th Evander Kane had his wrist severely lacerated, accidently by the skate of Patrick Maroon in a game against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Kane has had wrist surgery to repair the damage to his wrist and is expected to be out of the lineup until mid February at the earliest. Kane being out takes away from the Oilers offensive firepower and the team misses the physical edge he brings. Other injuries have started to take a toll as well with Kailer Yamamoto, Warren Foegele, Zach Hyman, Phillip Broberg, Tyler Benson and Ryan McLeod all missing time.

The disastrous Oilers penalty kill has been a major issue for this team. The Oilers are near the bottom of the league on the penalty kill with only the Vancouver Canucks, Seattle Kraken, Anaheim Ducks and St. Louis Blues beneath them. My opinion is that the forwards up high are having difficulty knowing where they are supposed to be in their coverage. It appears each forward doesn’t fully know their assignment. The other problem I see is when they do recover the puck they fail to send the puck all the way down the ice. Our defencemen also get caught puck watching and miss assignments, fail to tie up sticks and give up easy goals because of it. The penalty kill is going to have to get better for this team to be a playoff team.

Defensive zone coverage is this teams Achilles heel. They say defence wins championships so if the Oilers want to become champions their team defence needs to improve. When Jay Woodcroft took over last year there was a commitment to playing team defence. It helped them become a playoff team. Duncan Keith retired and Kris Russell wasn’t re-signed so there have been a few changes to the defensive core.

I am of the opinion the problem with the Oilers defence goes beyond the personal on the ice but I will say that many times this season I have seen defencemen get caught giving up the middle of the ice. Bad reads have led to odd man chances or breakaways from turning the wrong way and bad pinches. I don’t want to single out any defenceman with that assessment because they are all guilty of it.

In our own end our defencemen can appear lost at times as well. I don’t like to see both defencemen chasing behind the net but it happens with this group far too often. There is also a tendency to get caught puck watching and leave opposition forwards open in prime real-estate. Far too frequently when we do recover the puck, forwards flee the zone leaving long outlet passes that lead to icings. It was noticeable when Woodcroft took over last year that team defence started in the offensive zone. This season the same cannot be said.

We can blame the defencemen on this team for their share of what’s wrong but the forwards also need to own their share. Also, with the absence of Mike Smith there has been a learning curve for this team. I’m not sure it can be quantified the adjustment for everyone missing Smith’s puck handling but this team needs to learn to play without him. In regards to our defencemen, if you ask the question like @AdamsOnHockey did on twitter of who has been the Oilers best defenceman so far I find that a real tough question to answer.

I said Tyson Barrie and that is not good news if you are a fan of the team. I think too many of our defencemen have had poor years so far. If that question was posed a couple of weeks ago I probably would have said Cody Ceci but Ceci has had his struggles as of late.

Brett Kulak for me hasn’t been as effective as he was last season also. Earlier in the year he was having skate issues. Falling down a few times which caused opposition breakaways or quality chances.

Evan Bouchard has had a sophomore slump but started to come on recently until the third period of the Washington Capitals game where he was benched in the third period after a bad read which helped the Capitals win the game.

Darnell Nurse has had his own struggles with coverage and reads. This team needs more from him than what he has given so far. This team needs him to be a true number one and for most of the season they haven’t gotten that from him. He is logging heavy minutes and at times it’s more than he can handle.

Unfortunately I don’t expect reinforcements to be coming to save the day either. This team is up against the salary cap and I believe it will be left up to the players to tread water until the trade deadline before any major trade will happen. This team has shown the ability to beat the upper echelon teams but also drop games against the lower echelon.

The Oilers have played just over one-third of the season, but more will be expected this winter to lock down a playoff spot, and hopefully, home-ice advantage in the playoffs again.