EDMONTON — It’s been an anthem around this town, for some, ever since it became clear that Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid would cement the Edmonton Oilers as one of hockey’s top offensive teams for years to come.
They were always going to be able to score, but defence wins championships. So will the Oilers ever defend well enough to be a champ?
“Well,” began head coach Jay Woodcroft, on the eve of Wednesday’s season opener against Vancouver, “we’re about to take that test.”
Along the way, they have improved. But not enough to keep the Colorado Avalanche in check in Round 3, where the Avs scored 22 goals in a four-game sweep last season.
Last season, the Oilers finished 11th in the NHL with 104 points. They were seventh in scoring with 285 goals, but 18th in goals against (251 goals).
Come playoff time, only two teams averaged more goals per game than Edmonton’s 4.06, and one of those teams won the Stanley Cup. However, the Oilers’ 3.69 goals allowed per game ranked 13 out of 16 playoff teams.
Only one team in the bottom half of the goals-against-per-game chart won a round, and that was Edmonton, which of course won two rounds. Every other club to cough up goals at a rate of 3.29 or worse did not emerge from Round 1.
To a degree, that makes the Oilers an anomaly, having bled scoring chances throughout the post-season. Tet they managed to outscore their mistakes.
Can you win a Stanley Cup that way? History says, no chance.
“That’s always what it’s been about for this group — keeping the puck out of the net,” said captain McDavid on Tuesday. “There’s lots that’s been made about that. We don’t we don't hide from it.”
We’ll plead guilty on to McDavid’s second sentence, going back to the bubble, where the Oilers lost a four-game series to Chicago while giving up 16 goals — an even 4.00 per game.
From that series was born the column where we stated that the Oilers would never make the next step until their two superstars — McDavid and Draisaitl — approached their defensive game with the same enthusiasm they showed offensively. That was three years ago, and we caught a lot of flack for that column.
“I wish I had an answer for you,” McDavid said back then, when asked what stood between his team and a playoff win. “Obviously we’re missing something. I don’t know what it is and I’m sure everyone is going to regroup and try to figure it out.”
Today, Draisaitl is one of the NHL’s better defensive centremen. He wins draws, kills penalties, plays hurt …. You simply can’t ask for more from the big German at either end of the ice.
As for McDavid, we can honestly say that the best game we’ve ever seen him play was Game 6 of Round 1, a 4-2 victory in a must-win game in Los Angeles against the Kings. McDavid had a goal and two assists, and went plus-3 through 24:02 of ice time.
We’ve seen all of his five-point nights, and every one of those goals where he walks through an entire team to score. That night in Los Angeles, where McDavid simply refused to lose a battle or give an inch defensively, was the best game we’ve ever seen him play.
Two nights later, the Oilers beat L.A. in Game 7 by a 2-0 score, allowing their lowest shots total of the playoffs (29). They figured it out — in Round 1, against a Round 1 underdog.
Now, can they maintain that defensive posture against the big boys in Rounds 2, 3, and (dare we say) 4?
“We understand that we’re an offensive group,” McDavid said. “We’ve got to come together to keep the puck out of our net, and I think the goals will come. But stopping them from going into our net is more important.”
Is this defensive corps good enough, with a top pair of Darnell Nurse and Cody Ceci, followed by Brett Kulak and Evan Bouchard? Will it be good enough when the Oilers go hard after Anaheim’s John Klingberg at the trade deadline, a prediction we’ll make today?
As they say, it’s a process. One that starts Wednesday night against the Canucks, where we will get to look at a starting point for both teams.
From there, they’ll grow their game.
“The hockey you see in October is not the hockey you see in May and June,” McDavid said. “There’s certainly a growth that happens throughout the year.
“But I think the teams that get to their game the fastest are the ones that are most successful early on. The teams that bring that energy and that intensity to October are the ones that get off to the best start. That's just the way it is, so we got to be one of those teams.”
Edmonton opens its season with a six-game homestand.
If their goals against is under 3.00 by the time they hit the road, the Oilers will be a very difficult opponent this season.
