OilFan240

Hockey, technology, fitness, Vegan, public transit. #LetsGoOilers

[OilFan240 @OilersFan240]

Legendary

[Connor McDavid @cmcdavid97]

Our journey here continues 🧡💙

[OilFan240 @OilersFan240]

@whoinvitedjon No, but my team doesn't either.

[OilFan240 @OilersFan240]

@JeffVeillette I enjoy the shit out of Bixi in Montreal.

[Oilersnation.com, Oily Since ‘07 @OilersNation]

Hallsy.

[Woz @itsWozzz]

Taylor Hall can become a Stanley Cup Champion tonight.

[OilFan240 @OilersFan240]

@mewfree A cheaper way to get around, as with the 747 bus you have to get the 24hr fare.

[Austin Hockey @AustinHockeyYT]

As someone who has suffered NUMEROUS concussions, including two within a few weeks in my late teens, I am super fucking concerned for Bouchard's long-term well-being. This goes beyond hockey for me. If the Oilers allowed Bouch to play concussed in the playoffs fire EVERYONE.

[Sid 🇨🇦 @NHL_Sid]

The more I dig into Bruce Cassidy, the more I like him.

Here are some of his thoughts on analytics from a couple years back. Very insightful.

[Avi Lewis @avilewis]

The government should be protecting our public airports, not selling them off for parts.

History is littered with examples of the failures of privatization.

It drives up costs for the public, quality suffers, and workers always end up paying the price.

[Austin Hockey @AustinHockeyYT]

Fuck Bob Nicholson man, and fuck Daryl Katz for hiring Bob Nicholson. Fuckin clowns.

[Kevin McCurdy @KevinMcCurdy]

There are several compounding issues, Jason. I'll start with the on-ice and then we can talk about coaching.

The on-ice issues are fairly simple:

Ingram has been pretty poor (currently 16th out of 16 goalies), he's the best we got and he needs to find it, now. This is NOT to say he's been awful, he's made some incredible stops, need a couple more.

Special teams has sucked, the PP is creating but not finishing, that will regress (in a good way), I'm confident of that. The PK is on life support and they keep losing key pieces, not much you can do about that but try to adjust.

Bouchard's on-ice impact has been halved, I don't know if it's an injury of the body, mind or the Ducks are just suppressing the shit out of him (I'd say a bit of the latter two, especially given that hit he threw last night). We need Norris-candidate Bouchard to find his game. (25% GF, 29.7% xG, 35.2% HDCF.) Upside is he has the second worst PDO on the team at .879 (second only to Hyman). He's also getting .813 OISv%.

It's not just Bouchard, the whole first line is getting caved. We know McDavid is banged up a bit, but I honestly think his head isn't right, yet. His last 6 playoff games he's been 1-1-1 -9. He's putting too much pressure on himself, I think it's really that simple. He's trying to do too much, even for him, and the ducks are deploying excellent sticks and checking against him, exploit the other opportunities that creates.

Similarly, Nuge, Hyman, Ekholm are all having their own struggles.

From a coaching point of view:

First off, when both Dickenson and Rico went down, they needed a new plan, there are other strong, known combinations they had they could have run right out of the gate. Their first period performances have been actually quite good, but Q/JW are adjusting and bench is not countering rapidly enough. They've lost both second periods handily, and have split the 3rd periods.

It's not just KK but he runs the bench *and the rest of the coaches*. They need to be identifying what the issues are and countering them more quickly. They're fortunate in that the bottom 3 lines have been on a PDO heater, and if it regresses before the top unit gets going bad things are going to happen. Paul Coffey tried to change it up in the 3rd yesterday, that helped some, but not enough. Special teams coaches need to be working overtime to figure it out.

Specifically for Knoblauch the guys that are struggling the most should be grouped together, there's old familiarity there, and they can adjust minute distribution if they can't get going for the lines that are with fewer compromises, think 93-97-18. He needs to find some line matches they can exploit, though that becomes harder on the road. There were lines deployed last night, specifically pairs, that do not have chemistry. 93-28 for example. The matching is my biggest issue, and the line combos. They really need to focus up on cleaning up their cycle a bit, and that is a 5v5 issue.

If it were me, and granted I am not an NHL coach, just an observer, I'd run:

93-97-18
92-29-42
22-81-28

This moves the "problem children" (which is an incredible thing to say given who I'm talking about) to a single line, and maybe unlocks thousands of minutes experience together. If the top line can't get going, exploit the fact the bottom 9 *is* going, and getting Nuge out of that group probably helps. They also as a team have 20 giveaways (though we all know how reliable NHL tracked giveaways are).

There are positives. Kapanen has been the best forward on the team, and Drai's line with him is absolutely cooking. Samanski has been excellent, and sawed off faceoffs yesterday, he should be the 3C. Emberson and Walman finally got going, and that could not happen at a better time. The bash bros are holding their own by a good measure.

So yes, they are outscoring at 5v5 by a healthy margin, some of that is attributed to "luck". Imagine what it could be with just a bit of tightening and tweaking, and at the same time imagine what happens if the luck runs cold. This series (and credit to the ducks, they've been performing well FWIW) should still not be very close.

[Bob Stauffer @Bob_Stauffer]

Great debate on last night's panel.
FWIW:

EDM (5v5) with Bouchard: +24/56.23 XGF%
EDM (5v5) w/o Bouchard: -32/48.26 XGF%

COL (5v5) with Makar: +31/54.2 XGF%
COL (5v5) w/o Makar: +54/56.9 XGF%

PK TOI:
Bouchard: 144:30 (Leads EDM)
Makar: 144:31 (4th on COL)

[OilFan240 @OilersFan240]

@SportsThor @KevinMcCurdy And Broberg seems to be thriving in St Louis.

[OilFan240 @OilersFan240]

@dhockey13 Makes me feel much better about losing Holloway.

[OilFan240 @OilersFan240]

I fucking love Indian food.

[The Wonton Don @DonnieDoesWorld]

National Championship in progress and I’m watching @BizNasty2point0 try naan for the first time in rural Arizona

[Resplendent Beetle @rangerbob94]

@JayManCroft 46 points in the next 3 games would be insane!

[Edward Row 𓃡 @edwardrow]

the stats here are why the airlines have lobbied against this both in canada and america for ages

[fish 🇨🇦 @fishninetyseven]

i literally cannot express how much i dont want him

[OilFan240 @OilersFan240]

@worldhockeyrpt @OilersJohn And Holland. Fuck both of them.

[OilFan240 @OilersFan240]

@dhockey13 I've had to convince my Dad of his brilliance lol

[Hayden @the_transit_guy]

Meanwhile we are seeing bike lanes being pulled out and recreational trails federally defunded.