It was always too easy in Edmonton. Teams would roll into town, play a decent 25, 30 minutes, and roll out with two points and nary a bruise or scrape.
And the worst part? It wasn’t just the visiting teams who knew it was going to be that way. It was the Oilers themselves.
Size, battle, edge, grit, fight, nastiness… Call it what you want, the Oilers have been deficient for many, many years. Until now.
“Even if we were ahead, we would have that lead and we would still get pushed out of games,” lamented Matt Hendricks, who at 5-foot-10, 209 pounds is a prime example that you don’t have to be big to play big.
The analytics community has not been able to quantify the area that Oilers general manager Peter Chiarelli sought to improve when he arrived here from Boston. Sure, size is quantifiable, and 6-foot-3 players like Milan Lucic, Adam Larsson, Pat Maroon, Zack Kassian, Oscar Klefbom and Jesse Puljujarvi help. So do 6-foot-4 guys like Darnell Nurse and Eric Gryba.
But it’s size that can skate and size that can play — not just one big monster on the fourth line playing six minutes — that truly matters. It’s bigger players in your Top 6, getting enough ice time that the physical edge can be used to your advantage, and smaller players like Kris Russell and Hendricks, both of whom punch well above their weight.
The Oilers have been taken advantage of during Hendricks’ tenure here, and it killed him to watch it unfold. The numbers prove it prior to this season: five wins in their past 24 games against St. Louis; five wins in 29 against Anaheim; and against Thursday’s opponent — the L.A. Kings — just five wins in the past 25 meetings.
“We got pushed around. We got pushed out of hockey games,” Hendricks said. “Their big forward is coming in hard on the forecheck, and he knows he’s going to get the puck by the end of the game. He’s not worried about the confrontation. You keep getting pushed around, pushed around, pushed around, you’re timid going after those pucks late in a hockey game.
“Now, it’s a little bit different. It’s a battle every time the puck goes into the corner. We want to come up with it now, where it wasn’t that way before.”
It is the most rudimentary way to win, and admittedly it won’t work every night. But knocking over the opponent, taking the puck away shift after shift, eventually the sheer volume of chances created by physical dominance is enough to score you three or four goals. Assuming those big players know what to do with the puck once they earn it.
As an old scout once told me, “Big and good beats small and good almost every time.” Finally in Edmonton, the Oilers appear to have enough “big” to go with the “good.”
“We do win more battles … but there’s more to it than that,” said Jordan Eberle, who has struggled with just five goals in his past 32 games, spent mostly on Connor McDavid’s right side. “We’re a more determined team; we play differently as a team, and we put ourselves in positions where, if the first guy doesn’t win the battle the second guy will.”
Think of it like being a 12-year-old kid back at the community outdoor rink. When you arrived to see a group of 18-year-olds playing, you’d wonder, “How much am I going to have the puck in this game?” When the rink was filled with 10-year-olds you knew you’d handle it plenty.
That created confidence, which is a major part of hockey — whether it is at the outdoor rink or inside an NHL arena. This season, in the big Western Conference, the Oilers are 13-4-4. Compare that to their record in the previous three seasons: 14-29-7 (2015-16), 9-30-11 (2014-15), and 15-30-5 (2013-14).
“When you play a system, everyone plays it and you get results, you get confidence that way,” Eberle said. “When you’re a good team you feel like you’re part of something, and I think we have that here. When we do play well we beat good teams. We’ve seen that now.
“In the past we’d think we played well? But maybe we never stood a chance against some of those teams.”
Of course, the Oilers in-Conference success coincides with a general softening in the Western Conference overall. But Edmonton has already beaten nemesis St. Louis twice, and with a win against the Kings Thursday would be 1-1 versus the Ducks and Kings.
The improvement is tangible. One look at the standings shows you that.
“It’s not about going out with no gloves on and fighting every time you get an opportunity. It’s being relentless on the forecheck and taking advantage of smaller guys — when you can do that,” Hendricks said. “We have plenty of players in the room who are willing to do the rough stuff. And it gives everyone else in the room a little more edge to their game.”