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About That Blueline

May 15, 2017, 2:16 PM ET [65 Comments]
Matt Henderson
Edmonton Oilers Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
With the Oiler season closed behind us, it’s now time to start taking a look back. It’s always important to know where you’ve been before deciding where you’re going to go next. That’s a pretty big task and we’ve got an entire summer to figure it all out. Right now I’m most interested in identifying the weaknesses that held Edmonton back because that gives us a roadmap on how to fix them.

The Oiler defense is one of two areas of main concern for me moving forward (the other being secondary scoring). Edmonton’s blueline heading into the year had the most question marks beside it. Nurse came off a mixed bag first pro season, Benning was a complete unknown, expectations for Larsson were on hold after a divisive trade brought him to Edmonton, Klefbom was returning from major injury, and Russell was a last-minute deal to fill out the roster.

To Edmonton’s benefit, for the majority of the year the blueline maintained relative health. Klefbom was excellent, Larsson was stable, Nurse took a step forward, and Benning surprised. The Sekera/Russell pairing was most definitely an important cog in the Oiler defense, but their results together are certainly disputed. Ask some and Russell single-handedly destroyed analytics with his heroic and sometimes death-defying shot blocking ability. Ask others and they were bailed out by Talbot night after night as they allowed unfettered access to the defensive zone.

That same division in analysis extended to the post-season play as well. We all know that this blog leans towards evidence based analysis so it won’t surprise anyone to see that my own view of the Sekera/Russell pairing in the playoffs was overall poor. I think the duo, and Russell in particular, struggled against the forecheck. This is not without that pairing having their good games or without the other pairs having bad games mind you. It was just 13 games, but everyone had moments of glory and despair.

When we ask ourselves, “How can the Oilers win the Stanley Cup next year?”, I think it’s also fair to ask how the defense can be improved. Going into next season and praying that McDavid being a year older lifts the Oilers into serious Cup contention is a pretty lazy strategy. The window to win for the Oilers is open today. This team isn’t good enough to be in the “Just maintain greatness” phase of this process. They haven’t won anything.

So when we look back at these playoffs it’s with an eye to the future that we do it. Where were the successes? Where were the struggles? Where are the opportunities to be get better?

The Oilers faced off against the Ducks and the Sharks in the playoffs. The lines were shuffled for San Jose when Thornton returned so it’s difficult to get an easy split but in total there are 5 players between the two clubs who really represented top 6 opposition for both series. For the Sharks it’s the trio of Couture, Pavelski, and Thornton. In some combination they played on two lines over the 6 game series. For the Ducks it’s Kesler and Getzlaf, a two-headed monster that gave Edmonton everything it could handle and more.

What I’ve done is simply breakdown how each (regular) Oiler defender fared against these top 6 opposition forwards in terms of shot attempts. This is not an exhaustive breakdown by any means. It’s just a snapshot into how much the Oilers owned the puck when playing against each of these forwards depending on which defenders were on the ice.







Against the Sharks’ top 6, the Oilers really managed to control the play with the exception of the Sekera/Russell pair. Sekera really comes out of that series looking ugly. Russell is not that far behind him. Happily, the Klefbom/Larsson and Nurse/Benning units really pull the weight. It’s rather unfortunate that Edmonton’s 2nd pairing gets abused during the 1st round of the playoffs. While Nurse and Benning are performing well, they are most definitely not seeing as much ice as Sekera and Russell.



Against Getzlaf, the second pair for the Oilers gets its redemption. After Sekera went down to injury, Russell moved over to his natural left side and Benning was spotted up to the 2RHD position. In any combination, that pair killed it compared to the beat-down that Klefbom and Larsson took. Only Gryba got particularly close to even against Getzlaf’s line, however.



Against Kesler it was more of the Sharks series all over again, with Sekera and Russell getting caved in while the others at least kept it close-ish. In both cases, though, the Ducks top two lines controlled play against the Oilers no matter which pairing was out there. When we look at where the Oilers fell short, we can blame the officials for blowing calls, but their inability to succeed against the best players on the other side of the ice should be circled in red.

When we look to the future, I think it’s important to really question if we aren’t seeing a pattern with the way the 2nd pairing bled possession. If we compare how the regular season looked versus the post-season, we can see familiar trends developing. The biggest difference being the post-season is just 13 games of data compared to 82 for the regular season.





There is a clear outlier when we step back and look at the data. It’s Kris Russell, the defender who was signed as a stop-gap fill in with days to go before the season started. Without fail the Oilers had the lowest percentage of shot attempts when Russell was on the ice in the post-season just as that was the case in the regular season. As any observer should have noted after 95 Oiler games this year, number 4 has many admirable qualities, but defending his own blueline and making consistent controlled exits are not among them. Those issues that plagued him all year are unquestionably major contributors to the negative effects he’s had on possession and scoring.

Edmonton’s biggest opportunity to improve the defense next season is on the 2nd pair. Sekera is signed long term with a NMC and has played solid possession hockey in the past. Klefbom and Larsson ought to be the top pair for the foreseeable future. Benning and Nurse are the youth defenders who will push from the 3rd pairing. Finding a more dynamic (offensively or defensively) right shooting defender to play with Sekera could greatly impact Edmonton’s success next year during the playoffs.

During the playoffs that pair really struggled against the top 6 forwards from San Jose and Anaheim. That was really foreshadowed by their struggles during the regular season. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results then it would be crazy to move forward with Sekera/Russell as the second pair next year. The results are pretty clear.

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