Stanley Cup Final: Small wins & quick hits

Panthers/Oilers with the series up for grabs

I’ve tried to stay away from being too analytical during this series because it’s been so great to watch as a fan. It’s had a little of everything with three games going to overtime, thrilling comebacks, late goals and the league’s top talents showing out. It’s similar to last year’s Final with how the two teams are trading haymakers, but different in the sense that it’s happening within the games now instead of them exchanging wins. Edmonton’s had stretches where they’ve carried the play followed by periods where Florida’s dominated & one team’s had to put together something in the final minute to force overtime. It’s been peak hockey and exactly what you want from a heavyweight bout like this.

I’m just going to use this to rattle off some observations that are too long for social media.

Game Stats

Scoring chances are dead even and it’s actually somewhat misleading when taking the flow of the games into account. It’s been more of one team hemming the other one in or skating downhill for 6+ minutes rather than the play going back-and-forth. The zone entry stats reflect that well. Florida’s played this series on their terms at 5v5 in that sense. They play more dump-and-chase than any other team in the league and are better at forcing other teams to play it than anyone else too. Edmonton was 2nd in the league at Controlled Entry% and they’ve been able to find cracks here & there to get the looks they want in transition. Florida’s great, but every team is going to have a lull and Edmonton’s got the elite talent to capitalize when they do get it.

The one major challenge for the Oilers is getting through the Panthers forecheck & it’s where Florida was able to heavily tilt the five-on-five play in the first two games. The Oilers are very good at exiting the zone with possession, but their defensemen made some negative plays in the Dallas series that the Stars couldn’t capitalize on. Edmonton turned those into counter-attack chances. Florida’s been playing with the lead & they’ve been careful to not give the Oilers any of those opportunities, so if they want rush offense they have to put 2-3 passes together under pressure to do it.

This is where the series could have gone off the rails. The Oilers exits are in a feast-or-famine mode because even if Florida’s not scoring the times they are hemming them in, they are killing precious clock while playing ahead and making the Oilers play uphill. Getting Mattias Ekholm back has helped & hurt in some ways. Putting him alongside Bouchard makes their top pair better, but it also puts Brett Kulak alongside Darnell Nurse playing on his off-side. Kulak was a reliable enough puck-mover in the regular season & uses his body well to free up pucks for Bouchard or McDavid to retrieve. However, during these playoffs it’s been a struggle & it’s been going on since the Dallas series.

Against the Stars, only 8.57 of Kulak’s puck retrievals in the defensive zone led to a successful exit. The only player with a worse rate was Darnell Nurse. He exited the zone with possession only 45% of the time. The only worse rate was Nurse’s 25%. He successfully retrieved only 23.2 pucks per 60 minutes (the league average is 28), the only player with a lower number was Nurse with 21.9. You get the idea. They’re putting their two worst performing puck movers on the same pair with one playing outside his normal position.

Safe to say this strategy didn’t work. In the first three games, Kulak had 22 failed breakouts compared to 11 successful ones. Nurse didn’t fare much better with 15 failed breakouts compared to 9 successful ones. The two didn’t play together much in the Dallas series but their individual numbers were concerning enough that the bill was going to come due against a team that could forecheck like Florida. What’s been so difficult for them?

Part of it goes back to some of the stats from the Dallas series. Their puck-moving stats were brutal, but they also had the lowest turnover rate among the Oilers defensemen on exits. When you use the glass all the time as your breakout, it’s not the ideal play but it’s at least not coming right back at you & there’s a small chance your forwards win the puck battle. Florida’s just devoured them along the wall to negate their go-to breakout & make them chase.

The saving grace is is they didn’t get scored on & Kulak is good in that patrolling the front of the net role. There’s just no opportunity for either of them to advance the play until Florida makes a line-change. I’m always surprised Nurse has decent puck-moving stats in the regular season because his worst traits seem to get exposed constantly in the playoffs. He can skate but his passes are wildly inaccurate and his decision-making after making a turnover slows down & just makes the problem worse. Kulak doesn’t have the best skillset to retrieve pucks & kill plays on his off-side and the forwards playing deep compounds the problem with Florida not letting up on them on the forecheck.

This continued for one more game until Knobloch mercifully switched the d-pairs, putting Kulak with Bouchard to start the game, moving Ekholm with Walman & Klingberg took a seat to make room for Troy Stecher to play alongside Nurse. Of course, this ended up getting washed out because Stetcher only played four-minutes and it was a mix-and-match game the rest of the way. Kulak played with Nurse just as much as he did with Bouchard while Ekholm split time with almost everyone (except Kulak).

Despite how bad this game started for the Oilers, the switch paid off. Kulak had 10 retrievals with only three failed breakouts compared to four successful exits, while Nurse had four exits compared to two failed breakouts. Not the greatest, but a huge improvement compared to the disastrous trends of the first three games.

I’m also hesitant to say this fixed all their problems because they rolled five defenseman & Kulak was back to his old pair for about a third of the game. They did some things better, though. They got to play from the red line in more, so the issues with retrievals were somewhat negated, Kulak got himself open on his off-side for some easier breakouts while the forwards helped win pucks and it was less of a fire drill in general. I do want to highlight one of the Kulak-Bouchard shifts because it exemplifies how tight this series is & how one small play can change the game.

This is a long defensive zone shift for the Oilers & they gave up a pretty good chance to Reinhart just before this clip. They have a few chances to advance the puck but can’t do it because Florida’s still shutting off the walls, but their coverage in the defensive zone stays tight & the Panthers have to reset at the point after winning a couple pucks below the goal line. They don’t have a shot from there & move the play low & this is where Kulak finally beats someone to the puck cleanly to get it to Bouchard for an exit try. The play isn’t clean, but it’s what they were looking for in the Dallas series, a loose puck high in the zone with the defenseman retreated & Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is able to get a clean entry the other way. What happens right after?

The entry didn’t directly lead to a goal, but when a series is this close, it takes a lot of small wins across the board to eventually lead to a big moment like this. The Oilers aren’t out of the woods yet. As of now, they’re still likely rolling five defenseman and are going to have some exhausted players if they can’t close this out in two more games. The breakout issues & constant use of the boards are also still there, but they’ve done enough to make it so it doesn’t sink their chances of winning this series. Now we’re all tied going back to Edmonton, as it should be.

Individual Stats

• Even with six points in three games, I think we’re due for a goal surge from McDavid. He leads all players with scoring chances and has yet to score. The Panthers have kept him from running wild on them in the two games on home ice, but things were more open in Edmonton so it will be interesting to see how this flips the next two games.

• That Lundell line is a problem with a capital P for Edmonton. Dominant performance from them in the first three games and the Oilers are lucky that they only had one goal in Game 4. They’ve combined for 21 scoring chances through the first four games and Marchand was the best Panther on the ice in the first two games.

• There are a lot of things that go underappreciated with Barkov because of how quietly he accumulates stats and how most of his shot/passing numbers are from sustained possessions. That said, this is a weird series for him and some of it is from him being on shutdown duty. 7 chances & 5 setups isn’t bad, but only 4 zone entries through four games is strange even with how much of a puck hog Carter Verhaeghe can be.

• I’m not sure how sustainable it is for the Oilers to have a different middle-sixer pop off for them every game, but it’s been the formula for them so far. Game 1 was Kapanen, Perry & Kane in Game 2 and last game it was Vasily Podkolzin’s turn. I guess it’s better to have a different guy show out every game than putting all your eggs in one basket. I will say that RNH played his best five-on-five game of the playoffs in Game 4 and I’ve been waiting to see that for awhile.