October 5, 2024 by Ryan Lotsberg

The most positive story to come out of the Edmonton Oilers’ training camp was Noah Philp. The 26-year old undrafted free agent signing took last season off from playing professional hockey for personal reasons, and he played in the team’s final preseason game on Friday night. The fact that Philp stuck with the team until the bitter end of camp is certainly a positive development.

Pre-Season is over.
The biggest surprise was Noah Philp.
He created 5v5 scoring chances in every game.
Finished 56% in the faceoff circle.
Was second amongst forwards in hits.
Supported the puck defensively.
A 6'3" right-shot center…he will play NHL games this season pic.twitter.com/9rLby3M8j0

— Bob Stauffer (@Bob_Stauffer) October 5, 2024

Philp signed a contract with the Oilers after his season with the University of Alberta Golden Bears concluded in 2022. He then got into three games with the Bakersfield Condors at the end of the 2021-22 season. The Canmore product had a slow start to his rookie professional season in 2022-23, but then he ended up with nineteen goals and 37 points in 70 games for the Condors. 

Related: Oilers sign former Golden Bear Noah Philp

He announced that he would be taking the 2023-24 season off from playing hockey for personal reasons in the spring of 2023. It was unfortunate to see a promising young prospect miss a season of development; but I commend Philp for doing what he needed to do, whatever that was. 

Nobody was really sure what we would see out of Philp in this camp after having not played a professional hockey game in over a year. It appears as though Philp picked up right where he left off in 2023. Philp recorded a goal and an assist in five preseason games during this camp. He was involved in a handful of other scoring chances as well. 

He scored by driving the net off the rush and finishing a nice pass from Mattias Ekholm. Philp got a scoring chance in Friday night’s game in similar fashion, only this time he couldn’t finish the feed from Vasily Podkolzin.

Philp earned a secondary assist on Connor Brown’s goal in the Oilers’ 6-1 loss to the Winnipeg Jets. Philp chipped the puck deep into the Jets’ zone and tied up their defenceman. The Oilers won the puck battle, and Philp worked the puck back to the point. Brown tipped the point shot in for the goal. Philp also made two nice passes into the slot for scoring chances on an Oilers powerplay in the first period of that game.

The 6’3”, 196 lb right-handed centre plays a simple game. He’s got the size, speed, and skill to be an NHL centre. He has absolutely had a good camp and it’s great that he got an extended look. His five preseason games were tied with Travis Dermott and Drake Caggiula (who also had a fantastic camp) for the team lead. Philp outplayed Lane Pederson and James Hamblin, who have a combined 112 NHL games between them.

I’m going to be real with you though. Derek Ryan is dealing with a minor injury, which I believe is the biggest reason that Philp got that fifth preseason game. I don’t think Ryan played himself out of a job at camp, and I don’t think Philp did enough to steal a job from Ryan.

Philp’s five-on-five goal share was 2-6 (25%) in his five preseason games. His expected goals percentage was 48.85%. It’s a concern any time there’s a large gap between those two numbers, but it always merits a deeper dive to understand why that gap exists.

His on-ice save percentage was only 82.86%, which means he wasn’t getting saves when he was on the ice. That could simply be a result of poor goaltending, but it could also be a result of defensive mistakes. I went through the tape of all six goals against, and I can’t pin any of them on Philp. It was a combination of poor goaltending and mistakes by other players.

Ryan’s underlying numbers were all better than Philp’s though. His expected goal share was 56.61% compared to 48.85% for Philp. Ryan was above 55% in all of the major shot and scoring chance metrics on Natural Stat Trick, whereas Philp was only above 50% in one of those metrics (50.54% FF%). It wasn’t close between the two of them from an analytics perspective. Ryan also got two points in camp, which came on two beautiful assists in the game where Philp scored against the Jets.

Ryan is 37 years old, and he’ll turn 38 in December. Noah Philp just turned 26 years old. You might argue that Philp should be on the team over Ryan because he’s younger, faster, bigger, and stronger than Ryan; but Ryan is clearly the better hockey player right now. I think that Philp will replace Ryan on the roster someday, but that day is not today. That day could well come by the end of the season though. Philp will be better served by getting the opportunity to play big minutes with the Condors right now than he would be by getting seven minutes a night with the Oilers if he was to even play. Once he gets his feet back under him and he gets some momentum with the Condors, he could easily earn himself a call up. Until then, I’ll be following his progress during the season intently.