December 20, 2023 by Ryan Lotsberg

Connor Brown was the prized free agent signing of the summer for the Edmonton Oilers. However, the prize hasn’t paid dividends thus far. Brown has just one point on the season. It is believed that Brown will be a healthy scratch on Thursday night when the Oilers take on the New Jersey Devils based on the lines at Wednesday’s practice.

It took a little bit of creativity to squeeze Brown under the cap for this season. Brown met a rare set of circumstances that allowed him to be eligible for a contract laden with performance bonuses because he missed all but four games with a knee injury last season. The Oilers were able to offer Brown a $3.225 million performance bonus for playing in at least ten games this season. Any portion of that performance bonus that can’t fit under this year’s cap will be tacked onto next year’s cap spending. Kicking the problem down the road was fine because the Oilers are in “win now” mode.

Now we’re in a situation where Brown hasn’t been productive at all, he’s getting healthy scratched in the team’s 30th game of the season, and he’s earned that hefty performance bonus that will impact next year’s salary cap.

At #Oilers practice in New Jersey, appears Connor Brown will be a healthy scratch on Thursday night against #njdevils.

— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) December 20, 2023

There are a lot of numbers that can be used to quantify Brown’s poor performance this season. Zero goals is the most important one. Any fancy stat involving goals is going to be low when you haven’t scored all season and you only have one point to your credit. Brown being dead last among Oilers forwards in goals for percentage and expected goals for percentage is evidence of that.

Brown suffered an ACL tear that ended his season after four games in 2022-23. It typically takes up to six months to recover from that injury. According to a study published in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine, 97% of NHL players return to sport after that injury with “no statistically significant difference in in-game performance parameters from preinjury to postsurgery and improvement in several in-game performance measures compared with controls”. We’re past the point of being able to blame Brown’s knee injury.

There’s no question that Brown hasn’t been good enough. The underlying numbers aren’t flattering for him. Neither is the eye test. The play tends to die on his stick often, and he hasn’t made many plays that have led to scoring chances. Healthy scratching him for a game is totally warranted and frankly, it’s a welcome change to see a coach holding a veteran player accountable. A lack of accountability was one of the reasons that Jay Woodcroft was fired, and CEO Jeff Jackson praised new head coach Kris Knoblauch’s accountability when he was hired. Knoblauch is performing as advertised in this situation.

Simply put, more is needed from this player. The Oilers need the Brown who had a career shooting percentage of 11.6% entering this season, and that averaged over 0.6 points per game in each of his three seasons with the Ottawa Senators.

Is there anything in the numbers that suggests that Brown’s fortunes could turn, aside from his ridiculously low PDO (0.924)? 

According to Moneypuck, Brown ranks seventh among Oilers forwards in expected goals (4.4), tied for fifth in expected goals per minute (0.93), seventh in shots on goal per 60 minutes (7.03), eighth in shot attempts per 60 minutes (12.66), tied for fourth in unblocked high danger shot attempts (8), fourth in high danger expected goals (2.22), and tied for seventh in rebounds created (4). These numbers still leave something to be desired, but they don’t suggest that Brown should be sitting in the press box every night.

Brown has the sixth lowest percentage of unblocked shot attempts that miss the net (30.4%). That tells me that he’s at least hitting the net on the shots that he does get. It also means that he’s hitting the goalie in the chest quite often, which is not ideal. For what it’s worth, Brown has hit three goal posts in recent games.

According to Moneypuck, Brown ranks 422nd (or fourth last) among NHL forwards that have played over 100 minutes at five-on-five this season in goals above expected (-4.3). However, he sits in a tie for 65th in expected goals per 60 minutes (0.93), which really isn’t that bad. These numbers just show how poor his finishing has been.

His shooting percentage is obviously 0%, which is a far cry from his career average of 11.6% that he carried entering the season. If everyone that looked at the underlying stats during the Oilers’ rough start to the season and said that positive regression was coming, then we have to apply the same logic to Brown here.

Related: Oilers Sign Connor Brown

I’ll make one other point here. Brown did miss six games earlier in the season. He sustained a “muscular injury”, as then head coach Jay Woodcroft put it, while skating in a home game against the Dallas Stars on November 2, 2023. I can’t confirm the exact injury that Brown sustained, but Mattias Ekholm missed most of training camp with a hip flexor issue. It took him a good solid month at least to get his game back into shape after returning from that injury. Brown returned from his injury on November 18, 2023. It’s been just over a month since he returned from that injury. It’s possible that his skating and his fortunes will improve shortly unless his injury is a stubborn, nagging one.

Despite the hea;thy scratch, Brown is still an Oiler and he will return to the lineup eventually. How can Knoblauch get the most out of him? Brown’s most consistent line mates have been Evander Kane (155:10), Leon Draisaitl (124:33), and Ryan McLeod (97:36). Connor McDavid (44:22) is Brown’s fifth most common linemate. This table shows how he has fared with each player:

	CF%	xGF%	HDCF%
Brown & McDavid	56.99	49.2	47.83
Brown & Draisaitl	46.15	45.63	46
Brown & McLeod	53.8	49.2	53.33
Brown & Kane	48.55	45.55	50

Brown has performed the best with McLeod out of the players that he has played the most with this season. McLeod hasn’t fared much better than Brown offensively this season. McLeod has been better without Brown, but it’s not Brown is preventing McLeod from scoring. McLeod has his own issues in that regard. I don’t mind the fit between these two players. McLeod can transport the puck and use his speed, and Brown can engage in physical battles along the wall.

Brown’s fourth most common linemate is Dylan Holloway, who has been injured since Knoblauch’s first game on November 13, 2023. The trio of Holloway, Brown, and McLeod played 36:03 together over nine games early in the season. They fared well together, posting a Corsi for percentage of 55.17%, an expected goals for percentage of 59.40%, and a high danger scoring chance percentage of 60%. It’s a small sample size, but they were playing well as a line. It was just a matter of the offence needing to come for them.

Brown has not lived up to the expectation. He hasn’t been an upgrade on last year’s version of Kailer Yamamoto. It would take a wild turn of events for Brown to start producing at a top six level and to make that $3.225 million performance bonus worthwhile, but the numbers I’ve examined here suggest that there is a chance that Brown could begin to produce at a level that would align with the production of an NHL regular. That would make him a disappointing but usable asset.