As the summer drags along, mocking us with its distinct lack of Hockey, the Oilers have managed to stay in the spotlight. They are most definitely a team of interest around the NHL, having just hired a former blogger/lawyer/statistician to be a consultant with their Hockey Ops department and adding several players to hefty contracts. It's always interesting to see how the club is perceived around the league but in general the team is seen as having improved overall.
Certainly not everyone is a fan of these moves, and in many cases the media has taken a run at the players or employees the team has added. The Tyler Dellow hiring in particular was chronicled slightly different by our friends in the MSM than it was here on this blog. Mark Spector wrote a piece that basically stated Dellow better learn to watch his tongue or he’ll be excommunicated from the Oilers’ front office in a week. That article was taken down mere minutes after it was posted. Perhaps the Oilers were not too fond of having a Rights Holder say unkind things about their new employee. But, he wasn’t alone on that train, the Sun’s Tychkowski also came in guns blazing, laughing up the idea that the Oilers are some progressive team because they hired some blogger (Lawyer who won awards in University and Hockey Stat pioneer) out of his mother’s basement (home in Toronto) who wont even watch the games from Edmonton (analyze game footage as he has done for years much like Eakins likely does after every game).
Hurt feelings from MSM aside, I’m not sure there’s actually a credible complaint against the hiring of someone with Dellow’s credentials. I get that he can be ruthless on twitter, but I think we should expect more from the journalists that cover the Oilers. And if we cant, then there’s a serious problem. Shifting away from that hot mess to criticisms of actual players, Oilers newcomer Benoit Pouliot comes with the reputation of being a driver of possession but carries with him also a reputation for taking bad penalties.
Penalties are really interesting stats because they tend to fluctuate a fair amount but Eric Tulsky (one of those pesky bloggers who found work with an undisclosed NHL team) found that there was evidence that drawing penalties was a replicable skill. That link is a rabbit hole I’m not sure I want to go down right now as I have neither the patience nor the desire to spend the next several hours (days?) calculating penalties drawn per 60 minutes for the Oilers or their new acquisitions, so for now I’ll stick to plain old differentials.
Penalty Differentials are just the number of penalties drawn minus the number of penalties taken and it’s available on your friendly neighborhood ExtraSkater website. Some teams this year had incredible differentials, like the Sharks who had 291 PP opportunities and were only shorthanded 219 times. The Oilers had 271 PP opportunities and were shorthanded 280 times. That’s not good. It sure makes a lot of sense to me that strong possession teams would end up with positive Penalty Differentials because one would assume that the majority of the penalties go to the team without the puck, be it a hold, a slash, a hook, whatever. However the Kings had a negative Penalty Differential so what the heck do I know?
Pouliot himself had a -5 differential this past year, but was +5 and +2 in the two seasons before that, respectively. This reputation he’s made for himself will be interesting to track this coming season for the Oilers. It’s a small part of the picture, but the Oilers need to improve in every aspect on the ice, penalties included.
Maybe some good news for those interested in how the Oilers may fare at drawing penalties next year, of the bottom 8 Oilers in Penalty Differential last year 6 of them have departed. That bottom 8 was:
Nick Schultz -5 Ladi Smid -6 Jeff Petry -7 Mark Fraser -8 Anton Belov -8 Andrew Ference -10 Ryan Smyth -10 Sam Gagner -10
There’s a pretty strong bias against Defensemen as they don’t handle the puck as much as forwards and as such wouldn’t draw penalties as often, but still there is change coming.
Just something to keep an eye out for.
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