Oilers might be emulating Vegas' defensive system
The Edmonton Oilers appear to be tearing a page out of the Stanley Cup-winning Vegas Golden Knights’ strategy book this season.
In his latest edition of 32 Thoughts, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman mentioned that Oilers forward Evander Kane had talked about Edmonton’s coaching staff changing up some of the team’s on-ice strategy and structure.
“I’m not a Scotty Bowman-level tactician, but it does look like more of a box-and-one in the defensive zone,” wrote Friedman.
This strategy is identical to the one that the Golden Knights used during their Cup run and involves four players forming a box shape while an alternating fifth player puts pressure on the puck carrier.
As @FriedgeHNIC said in 32 Thoughts…Looks like both #Oilers and #TBLightning are switching to a "Zone" or "Box + 1" D-Zone like Vegas used to win the cup!
You can see when the puck goes low to high, D1 returns to the net and F1 Holds Middle Icehttps://t.co/NGVh2pkxIR pic.twitter.com/5zGwVqAX4T
— Andrew Brewer (@Abrew2014) October 11, 2023
This is a change from the man-to-man system that Edmonton employed against Vegas in the playoffs which involves each player being responsible for defending specific areas of the ice.
The box and one system is also regarded as a zone-defence strategy which requires defenders to wait for the puck carrier to come to them rather than attacking opposing players head-on.
This comes as the Oilers are putting a much higher emphasis on team defence for this season. Much of Edmonton’s appeal is its high-octane offence while the team’s defensive play has left more to be desired and was ultimately left exposed by Vegas in the playoffs.
“We made a couple of tweaks to the system,” said Connor McDavid in a recent interview with NHL.com’s Derek Van Diest. “That’s an emphasis to our group to keep the puck out of our net. It’s been well documented that our new system focuses on that.”
A change to a more defensively responsible system raises some questions about how it could impact their elite offensive production, but Oilers superstar Leon Draisaitl says that the team has already taken that into account.
“There are a lot of reasons we’ve made it to the conference final and the second round and that’s because of how good of an offensive team we are,” said Draisaitl in another interview with Van Diest.
“You can’t lose that, but there are little things in our defensive game that we’re willing to do and we have been doing.”
The Oilers will put their new system to the test for the first time tonight as they open up their season in Vancouver against the Canucks at 8 pm MT on Sportsnet One.
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