News Report From NHL: Edmonton oilers new manager announce a good news on a key player……. December 24, 2023 admin Uncategorized 0 How far have the Edmonton Oilers come under Kris Knoblauch’s coaching? Can you believe that each game has THREE goals? In the first month of 2023–24, the Edmonton Oilers were unable to win despite their losses. The team that finished the previous season with the second-best record in the Western Conference had an absolutely awful start, which ended up being fatal for both the starting goalie and the coaching staff. Throughout his first 120 games on the job, Jay Woodcroft had led the Oilers to the second-best record in the NHL (76-32-12,.683) and three series victories in two postseasons. He had also performed admirably throughout his first year and a half of employment. His team enhanced its standing as a formidable second-half outfit. Throughout his first 120 games on the job, Jay Woodcroft had led the Oilers to the second-best record in the NHL (76-32-12,.683) and three series victories in two postseasons. He had also performed admirably throughout his first year and a half of employment. His team enhanced its standing as a formidable second-half outfit. However, Woody and his defense partner Dave Manson were never able to complete it. They were replaced by head coach Kris Knoblauch, who was brought in from the AHL’s Hartford Wolf Pack, and new defensive assistant Paul Coffey, who looked like he had come down from Rogers Place’s ceiling, where his banner still hangs as one of the team’s and the sport’s all-time greats. At the press conference to announce the transition, the two got to know one another. In contrast to the circumstances in February 2022, when Woodcroft and Manson took off from Bakersfield together while carrying two of their own young defensemen, the most recent transition lacked much consistency. There was a desperate air to it. The problem is, though: it was effective. Alternatively said, it has been effective thus far. Only two months have passed since the start of the season, but for Oilers supporters, the second month was far more fruitful than the first. After playing and winning Game 26 against Chicago on Tuesday night, the Oilers (2023–24) have now seen exactly 13 games under Woodcroft and Knoblauch. It has changed drastically. Let’s start with a format that’s familiar to regular readers, though usually in 10-game chunks: Take a look at those objective statistics; they provide all the information we require. The Oilers scored 21 goals and gave up 17 goals in Knoblauch’s 13 games compared to Woodcroft’s. Add an artificial shootout “goal” from the Vegas game (which appears only on the NHL.com standings page) and Edmonton’s goal differential increased by an astounding 39 goals, assuming you enjoy round figures. EACH GAME: THREE GOALS! 1 Knoblauch’s first road trip saw the Oilers lose their first three games against those 34 goals (3 empty netters included). In contrast, the new man’s 10 other games saw the Oilers win, giving up just 17 goals against. For every coach, this statistical summary offers a range of squad statistics. Additionally, we have given the Oilers’ NHL ranking for each of the two game spans that are being examined (October 11–November 11 and November 12–December 12). Those red ranks are all very, very awful. The NHL’s lowest five are shown by the darker red, which is typically the bottom three. Strangely, under Woodcroft, the NHL’s top 5 rankings for “process” metrics (dark green) included shots, scoring chances, and projected goals. However, because of bad conversion rates on both ends of the sheet, that technique produced absolutely no results. Just so you know, it really doesn’t matter how the opposing side distributes their shots as long as you don’t score from your own shots and you don’t block theirs. We won’t go into detail because readers of this site are likely familiar with this material. Instead, we’ll just replicate the data above and add a few more columns to show how Edmonton performed in their final 13 games of the 2022–2023 season.. This implies that the real anomaly in this situation was the beginning of the current season and Woodcroft’s demise. The Oilers have reverted to the form that made them Stanley Cup contenders a year ago under Knoblauch. The team fluctuated in performance from having the second-best PDO (the total of shooting and save percentage) during the course of the previous year to the second-worst in the first month and then back to the second-best in the month that followed. Their performance in terms of wins and goal difference almost exactly mirrored the first-to-worst-to-first scenario. It’s interesting that the penalty kill did too. It’s been quite the journey. In every instance, the fundamental figures were robust, albeit, in my opinion, rather misleadingly so during the first month of this season. The Oilers had a lot of possession of the puck, but they struggled with execution; as a result, fire drills and jail breakouts went unavoidably. Failure was inevitable when poor puck luck was sprinkled liberally across crucial moments. It turns out that several of these process issues were, in fact, observable based on our own analysis of Grade A Shots at the Cult of Hockey. Unlike other (great!) sources like Natural Stat Trick, which uses a completely automated system to scrape shot location and shot type data, our approach is different. We perform video analysis, taking into account dynamic variables like screens, puck movement, and odd-man rushes. Our findings show that the Oilers have improved all around at both ends of the sheet under Knoblauch. Focusing only on the top five alarm chances—our term for the greatest and most threatening looks—the team generated thirty more of these opportunities throughout the assault while letting up only twelve in their end. In just 13 games, that’s a net differential of +42. An improved goal differential of roughly one per game, or roughly one-third of the actual improvement, may be explained at the observed rate of roughly one goal for every three 5-alarm opportunities. Specifically, there has been a noticeable shift on both sides in the number of goals scored off the rush, which were terrible during Woodcroft’s month and improved While I am far from an expert in systems play, by eye the Oilers are doing a few things differently, starting with a much more consistent presence of the forwards on the backcheck. The club is also doing a much stronger job of packing the defensive slot, and is showing the patience and maturity to not over-pursue the play when it is on the outside. Let’s turn now to the performance of individual players, starting in our usual custom with the goaltenders. Jack Campbell is the single Oiler who has paid the biggest price for the squad’s dismal start, having been summarily dispatched to the AHL just 5 appearances after earning the starting assignment in the season opener. Even in the lower league he has struggled to regain his form, and remains off the radar for the foreseeable future. Make no mistake, though, that Stu Skinner was no great shakes in the opening stages either. He wasn’t getting much help, but he wasn’t putting out many fires. His game has turned around under the new regime, with whom he has slashed over a goal per game off his GAA. He’s also added over 50 basis points to his save percentage, which under the new coach has returned to exactly the .913 he posted in both 2021-22 and 2022-23. Calvin Pickard probably isn’t a long-term solution, but he’s here and making his case, posting decent results in limited action. In his most recent appearance he won his home debut, this in a building where visiting backups won 4 games in the early stages. Going with simple boxcars here, with plus/minus an imperfect proxy for on-ice goal differential and ice time a similar stand-in for deployment. What immediately stands out is the sea of red minus figures in the early going, with only Cody Ceci barely bucking the trend. That has turned around completely under the new coaching staff, with all 6 defenders shown producing solid plus figures in the second set. Worth noting that every d-man but one produced more points in the more recent set of games, led by Evan Bouchard who has continued his emergence as a major offensive driver from the back end. On the deployment front, each of the top four has seen his ice time rise by about a minute per game under Knoblauch. Darnell Nurse remains the workhorse, but the load is much more equally shared since the arrival of Mattias Ekholm last spring. Under Woodcroft, the entire forward corps was underwater, bleeding more goals than they could score themselves. Under Knoblauch, a new super line of Connor McDavid between Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman has emerged, outscoring their competition on a nightly basis to spark the current 8-game win streak. The rest of the group has stabilized somewhere around the break-even point. And of course the powerplay has been doing its thing with much greater efficiency. As with the blueline, we’ve shown just those players who have been regulars in the line-up. Of the 12 shown here, 10 scored more points in the second set of games than the first; an eleventh, Evander Kane, matched his points total while mustering 6 more goals. Of particular note here is McDavid, who visibly struggled early in the season and had “just” 16 points through 16 games while missing 2 others to injury. But in the last 8 games, all wins, he’s exploded for an astonishing 22 points, which is to say that he has personally been involved in 9 more goals than Edmonton’s opponents have combined to score over that same span. Now that’s a recipe for success! Under Knoblauch the ice time of the top forwards has been scaled back slightly, by about a minute per game for all but Hyman, while reliable checkers like Warren Foegele and Derek Ryan have played a bit more. Likely a function of Edmonton frequently playing with the lead in the third period rather than chasing the game. Other considerations A big factor in the turnaround has been the physical recovery of players who were banged up in the early going, notably McDavid and Ekholm who both missed a little time but were clearly below 100% in many other games. Ryan McLeod missed all of camp and had an extremely slow start. Others including Leon Draisaitl, Kane and Nurse have been dealing with various issues, even as the usual Cones of Silence are fully operational and details are scarce. It’s iportant to note that the Oilers have been able to turn things around without a single trade, waiver claim or any kind of acquisition from another organization. All the reinforcements — Calvin Pickard, Sam Gagner, James Hamblin — have come from within. That’s a crucial development in a season where the organization is shy in trade assets, be they draft picks, prospects, cap space, or tradable contracts. That remains an issue going forward, but at least they didn’t feel compelled to make a deal, any deal, when the vultures were circling. Now at least the club’s brain trust can deal from a much stronger position of actual playoff contention, which has been established much sooner than even the optimists among us could have guessed. coach Kris KnoblauchEdmonton Oilers newsJay Woodcrofttruly horrendous
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