November 4, 2023 by Ryan Lotsberg

It’s clear that the Edmonton Oilers are struggling. They have a 2-6-1 record through nine games. That’s not good enough for a group with so much talent and such high expectations. There has been a lot of concern about many different aspects of the Oilers’ game. The resounding message from the team is that they know they’re better than this and they need to start showing it on the ice. The theme in the last few days has been individual mistakes leading to goals against. 

I went through every goal of each of the team’s first nine games and broke down what happened on each one. I didn’t look at goals allowed on the penalty kill, which has been a glaring issue, but not the one I want to focus on here. I’ve bolded the truly sloppy plays that would be classified as individual mistakes. I’ve italicized plays that were defensive mistakes, but not truly boneheaded ones. Here’s the breakdown:

Game 1 @ VAN

1st – Brett Kulak simply didn’t identify Connor Garland going to the net.

2nd – Evan Bouchard got stripped of the puck in the corner. One pass led to a goal.

3rd goal – BOUNCE.

4th goal – BOUNCE.

5th – PP

6th – BOUNCE, but Philip Broberg lost the goal scorer.

7th – PP

8th – Darnell Nurse got caught on a pinch at the offensive blue line. Ryan McLeod got back to cover, but not soon enough. Bouchard was unable to tie up the goal scorer.

Game 2 vs VAN

1st – PP

2nd – Kulak was unable to tie up Andrei Kuzmenko’s stick.

3rd – A Warren Foegele sharp angle shot missed the net, and the Canucks got a two-on-zero the other way. Nurse was the last man to join the rush.

4th – Mattias Ekholm was beaten wide on rush.

Game 3 @ NSH

1st – PP

Game 4 @ PHI

1st – Kulak chipped the puck to Foegele. Foegele tried to turn his back to protect the puck, but Travis Sanheim swatted it ahead easily. Joel Farabee scored on the impending two-on-two rush against Kulak and Vincent Desharnais.

2nd – Bouchard fumbled the puck high in the defensive zone as the last man back.

3rd – SHG. It was a simple two-on-two rush. Jack Campbell could’ve made that save.

4th – Neutral zone misread by Bouchard. Bouchard failed to identify Cam Atkinson streaking up the middle. Bouchard was watching Owen Tippett at the offensive blue line. He rightly retreated, but didn’t see Atkinson until it was too late. 

Game 5 vs WPG

1st – PP

2nd – Stuart Skinner’s puck handling gaffe.

3rd – Three-on-three overtime goal.

Game 6 @ MIN

1st – Bouchard failed to tie up Marco Rossi’s stick. He was in the right spot, but didn’t do enough to prevent the goal.

2nd – Campbell couldn’t corral the shot that hit him in the chest. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins lost Mats Zuccarello going to the net. Bouchard whiffed on the clearing attempt.

3rd – Credit to the Minnesota Wild. They found a soft spot in the zone defence. Cody Ceci pressured Jacob Middleton. Nurse covered Ryan Hartman in front of the net. Zuccarello snuck down into the corner since both players responsible for covering the low part of the zone were occupied. Kirill Kaprizov got the puck to Zuccarello. Nurse had to slide over, leaving Hartman open.

4th – Bouchard puck handling gaffe. Turnover, two passes, goal.

5th – Defensive zone coverage issue. Nurse should have pressured Patrick Maroon when he got the puck, and Nugent-Hopkins should’ve taken Nurse’s spot in the zone coverage. Nugent-Hopkins looked lost because Nurse didn’t make the right read. Nugent-Hopkins retreated to the slot. Nurse floated up towards Maroon. Eriksson Ek planted himself beside the net with nobody around him.

6th – Bouchard made a bad pinch at the offensive blue line.

7th – ENG.

Game 7 vs NYR

1st – PP

2nd – Connor Brown slid over to pressure the puck carrier, who was being marked by Kulak already. Braden Schneider found some open ice where Brown should’ve been, walked in, and scored.

3rd- The Oilers’ box formation got beaten. Artemi Panarin feathered a pass through the box, and Alexis Lafrenière one-timed it home.

Game 8 vs CGY

1st – PP

2nd – PP

Game 9 vs DAL

1st – Ceci made a bad pinch at the offensive blue line. Matt Duchene walked in and scored.

2nd – Broberg had a failed dump-in attempt while the team was changing behind him. That led to a three-on-one rush and a goal against.

Related: Broberg’s Development Versus Swedish Draft Comparables

3rd – PP

4th – A three-on-two rush that was beautifully executed by Dallas and poorly defended. Bouchard and Ekholm played man to man on that odd-man rush rather than staying in their passing lanes. A cross ice pass in the neutral zone got the defencemen moving to their right. Bouchard ended up on the puck carrier, Jason Robertson. Robertson found Joe Pavelski on another cross ice pass to get across the Oilers blue line. Ekholm had to slide over from Roope Hintz to Pavelski, leaving Hintz open. It appeared that Bouchard casually let Hintz walk to the net, but I don’t think he could’ve gotten there fast enough to get to Hintz. 

Counts:

Glaring individual mistakes leading to goals – 12 (1.33/game)

Bad pinches at offensive blue line – 4 (Ceci, Bouchard, Nurse (x2))

Defensive zone turnovers – 4 (Skinner, Bouchard (x3))

Poor neutral zone/rush reads – 3 (Kulak, Bouchard, Brown)

Failure to tie up a stick – 3 (Kulak, Bouchard (x2))

Neutral zone turnovers – 2 (Broberg, Foegele)

Poor rebound control – 2 (Campbell (x2))

Man lost in coverage – 1 (Broberg)

Defensive zone system error – 1 (Nurse)

Poorly defended two-on-two rushes – 4

Poorly defended three-on-two rushes – 1

Credit to the other team – 3 (Minnesota, New York, Dallas)

Defensive zone turnovers have been a big issue, but three of the four belong to Bouchard. Bad pinches at the offensive blue line are another big culprit. Three of the four bad pinches have come from the Nurse and Ceci pairing. 

Rush defending is the biggest issue. There were three poor reads in the neutral zone, four two-on-two rushes, and one three-on-two rush that were poorly defended. These are instances where the team was in decent defensive posture and the other team still scored. There’s no system in the world that can fix that. That’s just the players needing to defend the rush better and the goalies coming up with a save once in a while. It’s time for some rush drills in practice.

Who shows up the most in these plays:

Bouchard – 7

Nurse – 3

Kulak – 2

Broberg – 2

Campbell – 2

Ceci – 1

Ekholm – 1

Skinner – 1

Brown – 1

Bouchard had a brutal start to the season. The turnovers were killing him, and he was making poor decisions in the neutral zone as well as failing to tie up sticks. Five of the twelve glaring individual mistakes that led to goals were on Bouchard. However, it should be noted that Bouchard’s name didn’t appear in any mistakes in the last three games. It appears that he has calmed down a little bit in recent games. Also, if you remove Bouchard’s five glaring mistakes, that leaves another seven in nine games. That’s almost one per game without Bouchard’s mistakes, so it’s not fair to fully blame him.

It’s hard to win hockey games when you give the other team 1.33 goals per game on glaring individual mistakes. It’s even harder when you give a goal on the penalty kill every game. They’ve allowed eight goals on the penalty kill in nine games. The Oilers are playing catch up from the drop of the puck, and it’s mostly self-inflicted. They’ve shown that they can be better than this, and they will. They need to get after it though, because they’re falling out of the race quickly.

Related: It’s Not ALL Bad, Oilers Fans!