SportsHockeyOilers

Oilers' penalty kill has been a disaster to start the season

Preston Hodgkinson
Preston Hodgkinson
|
Oct 15 2023, 9:59 pm
Oilers' penalty kill has been a disaster to start the season
Walter Tychnowicz-USA TODAY Sports

The Edmonton Oilers have a penalty killing problem.

After dropping the first two games of the season to the Vancouver Canucks, there is plenty of finger-pointing going on.

Many fans have harped on the Oilers for their lacklustre team defense as well as the team’s two goaltenders, Jack Campbell and Stuart Skinner, not performing to the NHL standard.

What hasn’t been talked about nearly as much is the team’s utter failure at killing penalties early on, a trend that has sunk the team’s chances at victory in both games so far.

Opening night in Vancouver on Wednesday saw the team give up three power play goals on six chances on the way to a 8-1 loss.

The home opener then had the Canucks score once on three chances. This means that the Oilers allowed four powerplay goals in two games, killing just five of the nine penalties they took during that span and giving up their tallies on just 15 shots against.

That works out to a 55.5 per cent success rate which ranks 31st in the league. The only team worse at killing penalties than the Oilers right now is the Washington Capitals, who currently sit with a 33.3 per cent success rate.

This is a problem and one that is not necessarily new for the Oilers.

Despite finishing near the top of the Western Conference standings last season, the Oilers penalty kill was 20th in the league at 77 per cent, with non-playoff teams like Detroit, Ottawa, and San Jose finishing above them.

What’s the driving force behind the Oilers’ penalty kill issues?

In the summer the Oilers did very little to address their PK problem, practically bringing back the entire unit including Mattias Janmark, a player that was a fixture on the team’s mediocre kill last season.

Janmark was one of three Oilers forwards last season to see upwards of 100 minutes on the penalty kill (128), along with 153 minutes from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and 104 from Connor McDavid.

Janmark in particular has struggled mightily, being on the ice for three of those four goals against, more than any other player on the team. At even strength, the results have been just as dismal for the veteran Swede, finishing dead last in expected goals percentage, a stat that tracks quality chances for a team while a player is on the ice,Ā  in each of the first two games.

Here’s a look at each of the team’s four goals against:

Vancouver 4, Edmonton 0 (Game 1)

Vancouver 5, Edmonton 1 (Game 1)

Vancouver 7, Edmonton 1 (Game 1)

Vancouver 1, Edmonton 1 (Game 2)

All of these goals, with the exception of Brock Boeser’s hat trick goal in Vancouver, all share the distinction of being long shots toward the net with plenty of traffic either screening the Edmonton goalie or deflecting the puck.

So far, the Edmonton penalty killers have not done a good enough job clearing the opponent around the net and it’s caused a bit of an issue for the goaltender.

The good news for the Oilers is that this problem is already apparent and has the ability to be adjusted before it costs them any more points in the standings. The bad news is that there doesn’t seem to be a quick fix to the solution, as the penalty killers are practically the same outside of newcomers Adam Erne and Connor Brown.

11 players have played at least two minutes of penalty kill time for the Oilers this season, with 10 of them ā€” save for Ryan McLeod ā€” having been on the ice for at least one goal against.

Edmonton’s penalty kill won’t stay at 55 per cent for the entire year, that would be historically bad, but if it isn’t corrected soon, it could put a big dent in the Oilers’ Stanley Cup aspirations.

ADVERTISEMENT