One player told me that Jay Woodcroft, who is usually very calm, tore tape off the team in the second intermission. He added that it was deserved. The players held a players-only meeting yesterday to voice their concerns. Edmonton gave the Kraken a gift this game, and the players need to figure out how to cut down on periods of inefficiency. Immediately. Yesterday, their head coach concluded that his patience was running out.
— I asked Woodcroft how he balances his patience with the lack of goals from Kyler Yamamoto and Jesse Puljujarvi in hopes that they will deliver or finally give others a chance in the top 6.
“Those are good questions. I think the big thing we have to realize is that we are now in 2023,” Woodcroft said. “So patience sometimes has an expiration date as well. We’re almost halfway through this season, so if I go back to what I said to Rob (Tichkowski) about finding a way to win a game, that’s what we’re trying to do. And we will make decisions that follow that line of thinking. The time of waiting for people to go or maneuvering to try to get this person or that person to go, as I’ve said many times, we try to use our eyes and reward the people who are actually going.”
Klim Kostin has been playing well lately, and tonight he will play with Connor McDavid and Zach Hyman. Costin has five goals in 23 games, playing mostly in the bottom six.
— Costin went 5-3-8 in 227 minutes at 5×5. Yamamoto produced 2-7-9 in 376 minutes. Puljujarvi has 3-5-8 in 472 minutes.
Costin played 8:58 with McDavid and 6:46 with Draisaitl. Puljujarvi has logged 173 minutes with McDavid (his most common teammate) and 76 minutes with Draisaitl. He is 1-1-2 with McDavid and 0-2-2 with Draisaitl.
Yamamoto played 131 minutes with Draisaitl (the most common teammate) and 73 minutes with McDavid. He has no purpose with either. He has four assists with Draisaitl and one with McDavid.
— Kostin doesn’t need to be an offensive force to produce more than Yamamoto or Puljujarvi have with McDavid. Costin has the better shot of the two and should get opportunities to use it with McDavid.
— McDavid has 141 passes in the slot through 39 games. He had 280 last year. But he only has 11 5×5 assists this season. He hasn’t had players complete those passes as often as he did last year.
McDavid’s 5×5 assist totals over the last six seasons were 36, 37 (in 56GP), 29 (64GP), 40, 41 and 42. He’s on pace for 23 this year.
— Before you say it’s because he scores more, look at his shots on goal 5×5. He has 87 this year which is 8.35/60. In the past six years, it has been 9.35, 8.25, 8.13, 6.91, 9.2 and 8.71. He didn’t shoot anymore. He scores more but doesn’t shoot 5×5 more.
— If McDavid can get a teammate to complete more of those passes, watch out. Costin just needs to play like Patrick Maroon (24 goals on 5×5 in 81 games in 2017) and Zach Cassian (23 goals in 82 games in 2019) when they were very productive for long stretches. Both players didn’t get their hands on the puck very often, but they got to the net, grabbed rebounds and finished off many of McDavid’s great passes. Finishing is a skill and Costin – albeit in a very small sample in the bottom six and with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins – has shown he can score.
“I think the only thing that holds Yamamoto up with Draisaitl is that he’s not overmatched.” They outscored the opposition 8-4. But at some point, as Woodcroft said, production has to happen because you can make an argument that GF-GA isn’t entirely due to Yamamoto.
— Woodcroft hinted that the reason Yamamoto and Puljujarvi got more looks in the top six is because they aren’t defensive liabilities.
“We know there’s more to the players you mentioned,” Woodcroft said. “We want to play the game the right way, we think the numbers come from playing the game the right way. I think we played a great game in Seattle. Everyone seemed to put up pretty decent numbers in this game, everyone got their share of the ice time pie. When we do that, we’ve proven that we’re a tough team and we can beat the best teams in the National Hockey League. That’s the level of consistency we’re looking for and certainly the players you mentioned are looking for that level of consistency.”
— I understand the frustration among Oilers fans with the lack of production from Yamamoto and Puljujarvi and other complementary forwards, but the fact is that the Oilers need one or two of them to spark their offense. Ken Holland won’t be able to magically trade them all, especially when they’re not producing. They want to score for their own mental well-being, but also to help their team. Again, there doesn’t need to be a lot of production, just more than two or three goals in the middle of the season.
— Ryan Nugent-Hopkins mentioned the big problem that sees the Oilers allowing mistakes to compound. “Mistakes happen, it’s part of the game, but we have to stop them from turning into multiple mistakes.” I asked Woodcroft how, as a coach, he can help his players reduce the number of consecutive mistakes.
“When a mistake ends up in the back of your net like it did in the second period yesterday, you talk about the next shift,” Woodcroft said. “About putting a little more emphasis on the next shift and what that next shift should look like. I think there are other things we try to do to not let things get complicated. Yesterday we called a timeout, pulled the goalkeeper. It wasn’t because you just felt like doing it, it was to try to change the momentum a bit. Slow the game down, give everyone a chance to take a deep breath. I think the big thing is it’s not just the mistakes that end up leading to goals, it’s putting an emphasis on it when you see a certain type of mistake happen that’s under your control and you’re sitting on the bench and everybody sees how it happens, it’s about how to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And I think that starts from the bench, it starts from the leadership group, I think it feeds into the rest of the team, the coaching staff continues to communicate and say ‘this is what we’re talking about in this situation, we have to do this or that . Let’s make sure that the next time we’re in this position, we try to do that. I think this is all part of figuring out how you want the game to be played. Mistakes happen, you said it, but it’s about how you react. Lessons come hard if you are deaf to them.
“The players had a players-only meeting yesterday.” The loss of the Kraken was terrible. Edmonton handed the game to them during a horrific 11-minute stoppage with multiple defensive errors. The match illustrated that the players know how bad this performance was. The Oilers have lost five in a row on home ice and four of those losses the Oilers dropped games to St. Louis, Anaheim, Vancouver and Seattle. It’s a trend that must stop if they have ambitions to finish second in the Pacific.
— Darnell Nurse has been playing much better since he had a tough five-game stretch between December 9th and 17th. In the last seven games, Nurse has been much better. He beat his opponent 7-3 at 5×5. He has played 82.8% of his time against elite or middling competition. He has played 139 minutes at 5×5 while Cody Ceci has played 117. He has reduced the number of times he is on the ice. He has stayed on his feet more. During those tough five games, Nurse tried to do too much and fell to one knee too often. He has been playing much better since the Anaheim game and Dave Manson is using Nurse more as he did in the final 38 games last year when Nurse was excellent.
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