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Oilers Missing Key Piece On Blueline |
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The Oilers have depth at Defense for the first time in what seems like forever. The problem is depth is what you want after your first pairing, not as a replacement for the first pairing. You see, the Oilers don’t have a big minute stalwart to put on the ice and calm things down (or ramp them up). What they have are 6 defensemen who aren’t completely out of place in the NHL. It’s good, but it still might not be enough.
Simply having 6 NHL Defensemen doesn’t seem like that impressive of a milestone for a team that actually plays in the NHL and should have 7 of them on the roster, but for the Oilers it represents a pretty massive swing towards respectability. The Oilers have struggled filling the roster with people who can play in the league. Last year it was Fraser, Grebeshkov, and Larsen. The year before that it was Whitney, Potter, and Peckham. Before that even it was Peckham, Barker, and Teubert. Frankly it was embarrassing for an NHL club to ice teams like that, but times are different.
The Oilers are massively improved by taking what they already had (Petry, Schultz, Ference, and Marincin) and adding Nikitin and Fayne to it. The bottom of the order was sawed off and new pieces were inserted that changed the depth chart. That’s improvement. It’s why the team is out of the league’s basement and has a fighting chance at a playoff position. The problem though, as alluded to above, is that it still isn’t ideal.
Edmonton does not have a defender who can play 25+ minutes a night and be effective. The Oilers just played Nashville, who have one of the best blueliners in the world in Shea Weber, and they have the luxury of knowing that for 25-30 minutes a night the right side of the ice is going to be safe for them. It’s covered. The Oilers don’t need Shea Weber specifically, but they need somebody who can take on that role. When they have that, all the depth that they found will start to pay dividends.
The player the club trusts the most with minutes is Justin Schultz and he’s averaging 22:15 per game. That mark might dip if the Oilers start winning again. During the streak he was under 20 minutes every night, in all their losses he’s over 22. Nevertheless, the point here is that Jultz’ 22:15 is only good for 49th out of all the defensemen in the NHL, and he’s the highest playing Oiler.
Contribution by committee is a lot easier to do with the Forward lines than it is the defense because the numbers are in their favor. There are 12 forwards playing in a game compared to the 6 on defense. If two of your forwards are having an off night and cant get much going there are 10 others who might be doing well enough to pick up the slack. If two of your Oiler defensemen arent accomplishing anything that’s 40 minutes of combined ice-time that you cant hide. Against Nashville Arcobello was brutal but Eakins managed to get Yak out on the ice with Hall and RNH instead. Hunt and Schultz were brutal while the score was close but there wasn’t anything that could be done about it except pray nothing bad happened.
On the radio with Lowetide on TSN 1260 yesterday I said the same thing, if there’s any time that you can get a true top pairing defenseman then you need to do it. For the Oilers that means it could be time to open up the vault of prospects, picks, and some select roster players to make it happen. No, don’t trade Yak or Eberle. Yes, make Perron, Purcell, Petry, any combination of players in the system (including Klefbom but not Nurse), and/or the 1st Round pick available.
What is Yandle’s level of desire to stay in Arizona on a team that looks like it’s about to kick off a rebuild? Does Buffalo want to keep Tyler Myers around at that price point? Will Winnipeg continue to do whatever the heck it’s doing with Dustin Byfuglien? These are the questions the Oilers need to be asking around the league, and if the opportunity arises, they need to act.
Adding a top tiered player to this defense would be a game changer. An absolute game changer. That’s when the work done to add depth on the blueline will really pay off.
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Edmonton Oilers Blogger • 
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