ANAHEIM — One would have expected some carryover. Some muscle memory.
After more than two months of being the second-best team (by a fraction) in the NHL last season, followed by two playoff series victories, it seems fair to have expected the Edmonton Oilers to have accrued — maybe even earned? — the recipe to the secret sauce.
How do we have to play to have success?
Individually, what role do I need to fulfill for the team to function at a high level?
What is our collective identity/personality, and how do we play to it three nights out of four?
Edmonton snatched each of those pebbles from the palm of the hockey gods last spring, only to arrive at the 2022-23 season with an apple, a road map and not a hot clue how they’d done it only months before. It’s like they were an expansion team, meeting each other for the first time at training camp.
As the Oilers open their umbrellas in rainy California Tuesday morning, they are (by points percentage) in 10th place in the Western Conference. They have won back-to-back games just four times in their past 32 games, a sign of an uneven team that cannot manage the same effectiveness for more than a heartbeat inside the 82-game schedule.
They are less a team than a pair of superstars in league-leading scorers Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, a couple of elite support scorers in Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and a power play that can — in the regular season — act as the pancake batter that hides their blemishes. Beyond those assets lies simply a bunch of guys: A bottom six that lacks definition, personality, grit or toughness; a soft, erratic defence corps; a group of sub-24 players who have taken backward steps since last season, and goaltending where the answer has become the question and the backup has become the starter.
Missing only Evander Kane, injuries aren’t an excuse.
This team is either underachieving badly, or everything that happened last spring was a fluke.
Key team stats
Record: 21-18-3 (fifth in the Pacific division)
Goals for: 3.50 per game (fifth in the NHL)
Goals against: 3.38 per game (22nd in the NHL)
Power play: 31.0 per cent (first in the NHL)
Penalty kill: 72.7 per cent (27th in the NHL)
Biggest surprise
Thank the good goalie gods for Stuart Skinner, whose emergence this season has come as a season-saver with Jack Campbell struggling in his new gig with the Oilers.
We are at the halfway point of the first year in Campbell’s five-year, $25-million deal in Edmonton, and Skinner has already taken possession of the No. 1 position in the Oilers’ crease — no ifs, ands or buts. An NHL rookie who is making a solid run to be a Calder Trophy finalist, Skinner looks like he could be the Thatcher Demko or Connor Hellebuyck here — a drafted goalie who becomes the No. 1 long-term.
Biggest disappointment
This is a toss-up between Campbell, whose season we have touched on above, and the young Oilers, who are taking a collective step back this season.
Ryan McLeod, 23, has four goals and 10 points in 29 games, after a three-goal playoffs that had us drooling over his rising star. Jesse Puljujarvi, 24, has just 3-6-9 in 42 games, most of them spent on McDavid’s wing.
Kailer Yamamoto, 23, has 4-7-11 after a first half in the top six, while 22-year-old defenceman Evan Bouchard’s game has eroded. He has been error-prone and far too timid for a six-foot-three man in a contact sport, with an elite slap shot that has become like a mountain wildcat — spoken of, but seldom seen.
We should say Klim Kostin, 23, has been a pleasant revelation. That he and Puljujarvi lead this team in fighting majors with two each speaks well for them, and embarrassingly for the rest of the group.
Biggest question for the second half
Who the heck are these guys?
They can walk into Tampa, Dallas and Calgary (twice) and come out with regulation wins. Then they lose to Anaheim, Vancouver or Buffalo at home, where the Oilers hold a 10-11-2 record.
Alas, Edmonton has been a yoyo, with 10-game segments of 7-3, 3-7, 7-3, and 4-4-2 in their opening 40 games. A team that many (us) thought would win the Pacific is stumbling along just three games over .500, a wild-card team on a good day.
Offensively, they have the NHL’s best power play (33.2 per cent) and the NHL’s top two scorers — plus Nugent-Hopkins (48 points) and Hyman (20 goals). But this isn’t basketball, where four great players can win it all, and as general manager Ken Holland tries to build a bottom six and a Cup-worthy defence corps, halfway through the season he has a decidedly mediocre defensive team.
The Oilers rank 20th in goals against per game (3.32), 24th in shots allowed per game (32.5) and 17th in team save percentage (.898). Darnell Nurse is struggling in the first year of his new, $9.25-million deal, and he needs another left-side defenceman who can take a few of his hard minutes away and help the Oilers keep some pucks out of their net.
To conclude, this is the issue that will define the 2022-23 Oilers: Can they find a defensive game that can cover up for their lack of even-strength scoring, where the Oilers’ goals share is 49.19 per cent and their 91 goals at the halfway mark ranks 21st in the NHL?
The return of Kane, who played just 14 games before having his wrist cut by Pat Maroon’s skate blade, will help on a few fronts. But a second-pairing defenceman who can kill penalties and chew into Nurse’s team-leading 24:06 per game is paramount to any playoff push and ensuing postseason run the Oilers hope to make.