Follow @james_tanner123 The Oilers played a great game last night against the Ducks, but especially noteworthy was the play of Yakupov.
He scored the only goal, had a 61%CF and was on the ice for 14 shot-attemps one day after it came out that he asked for a trade.
Now, who can blame him for wanting out? If you watch a lot of Oilers games, you know the guy's pure talent level is off the charts. There is no reason, given his skating and shooting ability, that he should be anything less than a star player in the NHL.
Also, if you ask ten people with even cursory knowledge of the NHL who the most poorly utilized player in the NHL has been over the last few years, I'd guess 9 of them say Yakupov and the other one is crazy.
My Theory: After drafting Eberle, Hall and Nugent-Hopkins and rushing them straight to the NHL, anointing them the present and future of the team, signing them to long-term contracts and still being awful, they decided to make Yakupov the poster boy for having to "earn it" - making an example out of him and sabotaging his career.
Like, what other team would have drafted Yakupov first overall and then denied him first line minutes, access to the team's other best players and power-play time? Even if you want to make it look like you're eliminating a "culture of entitlement" shouldn't you realize, by virtue of having made it to the top of your profession, that the people saying that are a) a vocal minority and b) not privy to the day-to-day goings on of the team?
This seemed to be confirmed when everyone and their uncle was picking Yakupov to finally break out this year with a "fresh start" under new management (I honestly can't tell the difference between old and new) and the addition of Connor McDavid.
Everything started out nicely until McDavid was injured, then Yakupov went down and now here we are: 57 games, 20 points, 7 goals. A trade request that most likely would have been granted if anyone wanted to pay full price on a discount player.
But to me, this thinking is flawed. I look at Yakupov's talent. I look at the 53% possession rating {editor note: I made a mistake, Yakupov's CF% is 49.3, sorry for the mistake}, and I look at how poorly he's been used and if I was a GM I would out bid everyone else for him and still hope to get him cheap. If I was the Oilers, I'd keep him.
Last night Yakupov played with Taylor Hall and Leo Draisaitl and they had a hell of a game. A "this could be the best line in hockey and the team still has Connor McDavid on the second line" kind of game.
But why then has he played only 36 minutes and 24 seconds with Taylor Hall?
Taylor Hall drives possession as good as anyone in the NHL. He is insanely underrated because of how bad Edmonton is/has been, but is easily one of the best players in the NHL.
Yakupov is a weapon.
Playing them together should be obvious, especially when you can put an all-round centre like Draisaitll between them.
And especially when you lose most of your games anyways.
For Pierre McGuire's sake, the most common centre that Yakupov's had this year is Mark Letestu. That is just a colossal failure of lineup construction.
Yakupov is the tenth most used forward on the Edmonton Power-Play. He gets less power-play time per game than Letestu, Maroon, Purcell and Pouliott.
And it's not like he's not getting the time because their PP is so great: they have the 21st most power-play goals in the NHL. They have 5 more PP goals than the Leafs, who counter McDavid, Eberle, Hall, RNH with Kadri, Paranteau, Boyes and Bozak.
Whatever else you want to say about Yakupov, his 53% CF means that when he's on the ice, the opposition is playing at 47% which would tie them for the third-worst team overall at possession.
So, why would the Oilers give up on this player when his value is going to be way below what it should be?
I know they aren't going to fire their coach, but the coach is demonstrably more responsible for the Oilers record than Yakupov is. (Though everyone should honestly calm down and realize injuries are the biggest factor in their last place finish).
Yakupov is only 21.
He is massively under-used.
He's still going to be a star in the NHL.
The Coyotes, as I pointed out last night, are the poster-team for bad analysis because when they win, you can go around and see tons of articles about how hard they play and how they're a team on the rise etc. even though they have a record that is better than it should be and often seem to win games they have no business winning.
Conversely, you when they lose, they don't get any credit because people assume that they are terrible and deserved to lose.
Last night's game is the perfect example: a 5-2 loss to the Flames appears on the surface to be a blow-out.
However, the Coyote's goaltending was terrible, with Domingue allowing four goals on 20 shots. Also, the Flames had an empty-net goal and two power-play goals (as did Arizona).
So, what was a 5-2 game on paper is really a 2-0 game over 51 minutes of 5v5 time. Doesn't change the result, but I think it makes sense to judge the team on what happened rather than what the results say happened. It's still a loss, but it there is a difference - at least for analytical purposes - between being blown out 5-2 and actually playing a decent game.
The Coyotes played a decent game. In the vast majority of games you play, you will get better than .800 goaltending. You can probably count on winning the majority of games you play where you only take two penalties. You can probably count on a better PK % than 0% on most nights. You can probably count on winning the vast majority of games where you hold the opposition to two 5v5 goals (which would normally be less since the goaltending was anomalous anyways).
Considering in the last couple of weeks, where the results have been favorable, that the Coyotes won several - at least three, probably more - games where they played much worse than they played last night.
Lets even give Grossmann some due: 57% in 13 minutes in his return from the pressbox.
Thanks for reading.
Stats: Waronice.com Stats.hockeyanalysis.com