I love watching the smart hockey math people discover new things. I read Dom Luszczyszyn and Shayna Goldman at The Athletic, Travis Yost at TSN, Meghan Chayka at Stathletes, Rachel Doerrie at Betalytics, and I pay close attention to Puck IQ and what the numbers say on that site. Every once in a blue moon my friend Darcy McLeod will drop me a line and help with insight, and I appreciate him very much.
I used to read all of the analytics folks, but found most were selling bibles. “I’ve found the truth and the light!” should serve as warning for all, in any area of life.
The analytics industry used to be “I think you’re on the right track, but why not try this” and it worked for me as a reader and adult learner. You know, that’s how Corsi inspired Fenwick, just folks talking about what had value and what did not have value.
Now the verbal from much of the analytics folks is “here’s why you’re stupid” followed by mocking of reader, and possibly the player being discussed. I hate bullies, and even though it’s a stretch to call the math people bullies (and unfair to call them nerds), there is an enormous amount of “I’m smart, you are dumb” in the hockey analytics industry.
So, what should we value? I start with Puck IQ. Did you know that the order of qual comp (versus elites) from the trade deadline to the end of the season (the blue) went: Evan Bouchard (67 minutes), Darnell Nurse (61 minutes), Brett Kulak (58 minutes), Jake Walman (56 minutes), Troy Stecher (35), Ty Emberson (27)? Mattias Ekholm, John Klingberg, Cam Dineen and Josh Brown played fewer than 10 games, so I won’t quote there here.
What can we learn from this? Well, based on the deployment in the Stanley Cup playoffs, John Klingberg has emerged as a real going concern and the coaching staff loves him with Jake Walman. The two men have played just shy of 200 minutes together, are 6-6 goals and have an expected goal share of 57 percent.
Evan Bouchard gets belittled on the daily, here and elsewhere. It’s kind of a test to see if people obsess about single events. Bouchard is 4-2 goals in 48 minutes with Mattias Ekholm (58 percent expected); 7-1 goals in 130 minutes with Brett Kulak (65 percent expected); 5-8 with Darnell Nurse in 92 minutes (55 percent expected).
Ironically, Nurse away from Bouchard is 9-7 goals but owns a 45 percent expected goal share. Nurse-Kulak is 2-6 goals (45 percent expected) in 124 minutes, after going 44 percent goal share in 399 regular-season minutes.
I’m always worried about trusting the math in under 200 minutes. I do think we can trust the Nurse-Kulak math, and suggest the coaching staff needs to check down from that pairing.
Keep Ekholm-Bouchard, Walman-Klingberg says the math. I’m not sure Kris Knoblauch will adhere to that advice, and I do trust the coach to perform a resurrection shuffle on the blue.
We wait. We can also be satisfied that no one was called stupid or ignorant in this discussion, and not one of us attempted to sell a bible.
New for The Athletic: How the Edmonton Oilers are set up for the 2025 NHL Draft
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6410453/2025/06/08/oilers-2025-nhl-draft-ranking/
Thanks
Reports on TSN say RNH will be a game time decision for tomorrow. DNB put out on X that KK confirmed this, but also said that he will likely play. So that’s good news for now, can’t afford for him to miss time
The biggest thing I see when watching this series is the Oilers failing to carry possession all the way into the attacking zone. They keep turning it over and the puck comes back into the oiler’s zone. I don’t think there’s a general problem with defending, just giving the Panther’s too many chances to come bring it in and set up.
in game one, it was mostly getting out of the D-zone (especially the Nurse-Kulak pairing). The problem looked to me like it was more an issue of forwards not giving the D good targets. They really improved that in G2, but are now sometimes getting caught in long stretches where they lose possession on very entry. If they can sort that out, they’ll dominate possession and scoring chances.
https://x.com/bob_stauffer/status/1931754020026359897?s=61
The @EdmontonOilers practice:
J. Skinner-McDavid-Perry
Kane-Draisaitl-Kapanen
Frederic-Henrique-Brown
Podkolzin-Janmark-Arvidsson
Nurse-Bouchard
Kulak-Walman
Ekholm-Klingberg
Skinner
Pickard
(RNH not on ice)
Read an article that discussed an interview with Stu’s wife. She says the family received death threats. That, is unacceptable, that stuff bothers me more than any action Bennet could take.
Agreed. It’s a sport, entertainment. There is no justification for behaviour like this no matter what. I understand we are all passionate about our team but this is way over the top. Athletes are human beings too, their job is just different. What drives a person to behave this way?
Degenerate gamblers would be my first guess… In fact, I’d put money on it!
RNH not on the ice. Skinner filling in. Apparently he was hit by Walman’s shot on Perry’s tying goal.
Through two games Bob had been a wall. Maybe only one bad goal to Arvidsson.
I foresee the Oilers getting through to Bob in Florida, a 3-goal period would give us a cushion to deploy our “championship defense” formation.
I believe George Parros of Player Safety needs to say something. The NHL needs to have foresight and prevent something more serious from happening. Bennet crashing into the goalie and having injured 3 goalies already, is one thing. Next time, it could very well end up differently. How about Skinner accidentally stepping on his face or neck with his skate? The officiating and video review have left goalies unsure of which way the call is going to go, especially when everyone knows he is intentionally going to crash into them. If I were an NHL goalie, I wouldn’t care at this point if I stepped on anyone crashing my crease, knowing full well I need to make the save.
I said it before. Allowing this to continue is a mockery of the game. If Bennett has inside position in front of the net, how can you push him out? He’s simply going to fall on the goalie with even the slightest contact. It’s good to see he was penalized last game for this buffoonery. We can only hope the NHL has sent a clear and strong message that this won’t be tolerated. How it got to this point is mind boggling.
Teams are lemmings to the cliff. If this is allowed to go on, many will try it as taking out the starter really boosts your odds, and Bennett has received little consequence. The unintended consequence which will of course blind side them is the return of the ‘enforcer’ – the extra that is expendable hockey wise. Whose only job is to take out the offender or his goalie, as a tactic or a response. No plausible enforcement leads to vigilantes, just like it has before
If looking to the large samples of the regular season for hints of what might be to come, Stecher jumps from the spreadsheet as Nurse’s most common partner.
Calling-out Bouchard for two terrible penalties, and two poor-reads on set plays by Marchand/Florida, which ended in almost identical goals against, isn’t belittlement. I don’t see a lot of belittlement here.
The low-floor and high-ceiling that you often ascribe to this Edmonton Oilers’ team is perfectly evident within Bouchard as a player, and happens within single games.
To a large extent the outcomes of games ride on how he plays, the floor he sets for himself, and the way he negotiates single events. He is without a doubt one of the most influential Oilers in terms of outcome, and is one of the most influential skaters.
It makes sense that folks take issue with his individual plays. The perspective that these “do not matter”, is a curious artefact of public analytics.
There’s a difference between calling our Bouchard, saying he needs to be better in those situations and also not recognizing the good he does the rest of the game that usually largely outweighs the bad.
If, as you put it, “To a large extent the outcomes of games ride on how he plays…”, they are in the Stanley Cup finals for the second year in a row, with him being the second ppg defenceman all time in the playoffs behind Bobby Orr. With a Corsi of 57.4% at even strength, Fenwick of 56.7%, on ice goal differential of 31-19. He contributes a lot more to winning than losing. Does he make
mistakes? Yes. Does Mcdavid make mistakes? Yes. Is he more likely to make a mistake after player 35 minutes and have a HOF, Stanley cup winner, player who has the most active short handed goals in the league, 8th all time pressuring him, I’d guess, probably.
Re: Bouchard, fairly certain that is what daniel implied
When poor individual plays happen is a big thing. All players make mistakes, but the best players focus on getting the job done when it matters most. It’s one thing to be beat by a solid team or individual play, like McDavid setting up Drai on that PP last game – there was no stopping that
It’s another thing to make a poor play that is avoidable and ruins the effort of the team over a hard fought game, and chances at winning the championship. I keep mentioning Strudwick saying some guys never get it. It’s up to the GM to move on from those players and find ones that do the job better, mistake prone players who are experienced aren’t going to change or move past it
I think it’s incompetent or irresponsible to keep Nurse and Kulak together. It’s not team building time it’s Cup winning time, whoever helps the most plays. Go 11-7 for a game and see if Stecher helps more, if they are too nervous just to pull Kulak. Size isn’t really the issue, Kulak isn’t physical anyway, it’s who can help beat the forecheck and raise Nurse to a good enough level
Those penalties you bring up mattered, but at the same time I think I have grace for him in that he is coming to understand that he has to play by a different rule book then say Bennet, who is allowed to retaliate with impunity.
Of course single events matter. The single events we discuss are the ones that mattered the most.
Bouchard has to be the highest event player on our team no!? It drives people wild. Things happen when he’s on the ice.
I like him a lot, but at times I wish for a more stable vanilla player. Like when was the last time I was upset with Stecher?
The Oilers are not going to win the Stanley Cup if the Oilers need McDavid to make all world plays to get a goal while Florida gets two easy ones because Bouchard makes pee wee level bad decisions at the offensive blue line, or in boxing out in front of the net.
When the mean levels of play rise to the highest levels in the Stanley Cup finals, variance from the mean becomes more important to determining the winner than the level of the mean. i.e. the fatness of the tails of the distribution begins to matter.
Can McDavid outscore Bouchard’s mistakes? How fat is the Oilers right tail compared to its left one? The opposition impacts the right tail far more than the left tail. The left tail is what a team has more control over.
The higher the level of play, the more Bouchard’s mistakes begin to matter. Three in one game was too much in game two.
When one is down to seven games, single events matter.
In investing, when one has a long term horizon, when you need your money twenty years from now, volatility/variance is your friend. When one has a short term horizon, when you need your money next week, volatility/variance is your enemy.
They used to hammer on Coffey as well calling him a 4th forward. Bouchard like Coffey play such a high octane game that he’s in the love or dislike column. Bouchard missed 2 glorious chances to put us up 4-2 and probably missed 5-6 excellent chances in the first 2 games. Using his cap money who do you replace him with?
This level of assessment is what got Pete Debour fired.
Are the Oilers tied 1-1 in the SCF without Bouchard?
The boys play a simple game on the road maybe being away from crazy Edmonton will have them focusing on not pressing and letting the game come to them.
We are looking for small advantages. Will d pairing switch be the answer to winning? Frederic swapped out? Or similar tweaks?
I have no idea, the teams are so close, so any advantage could have weight.
Florida system has now become somewhat predictable . High pressure. Breakout strong side, Consistent board presence and pinch at blueline. Is there a set play the Oilers can utilize?
It may not be systems. Might just be who wins the small battles, works harder, makes the fewest mistakes. I think it will just come down to this factor, with Oilers higher skill players finishing more.
Spot on. Coaching staff has three options.
1 leave lineup as is
2 swap Frederic for JSkin
3 change the D pairings (I love Stecher – they are going to keep their 6 best DMen in the lineup)
From what we know about this team and coaching staff is that they get better as series go on. They are playing a great opponent. These are the two best teams in the NHL, the margins are razor thin.
Walman/Klingberg are 6-6 goals and 56% expected goals in 196 minutes – playoffs. I don’t think this pairing “can’t be broken up”.
Nurse/Walman are 8-2 goals and 62% expected goals in 105 minutes – regular season.
I think Nurse/Walman is worth a real look and, with Kulak/Bouchard at7-1 goals and 65% expected goals in 130 playoff minutes, I think the “fix” seems obvious.
It really seems like the following is obvious:
Kulak/Bouchard
Nurse/Walman
Ekholm/Klingberg
Of course, there is so much more than real goal share and expected goal share but, at the end of the day, the ONLY thing that matters is real goal share – maybe the stated goal share of the proposed pairings is running luck or there are other reasons to not go to it but, well, their small samples of success could be enough for a Stanley in a best of 5.
One of the things we don’t know is how injured Walman (and others) are. Seems by TOI and qual comp the staff is fading him. That might be a sign of injury that is impacting quality of performance.
There are times that Walman seemed beat up. He blocked quite a few
pucks. Hopefully the extra day helped
I may have missed this from others but the “Nurse fix” is Stetcher….lets go 11 – 7 dress Stetcher and play as needed
I would say no to 11-7 but if you want to throw Stecher in for a game it should be beside Nurse. Need to play all 4 lines and wear them out. Keep having D pinch deep to hold pucks in and ensure a forward is back to cover if it’s knocked out. Bouch is doing phenomenal; so well that his price tag keeps going up. This is 3 playoffs in a row he has performed like a superstar.
11-7 is terrible.