{"id":291513,"date":"2025-11-18T18:23:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T18:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/291513\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T18:23:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T18:23:09","slug":"oilers-quarter-mark-report-goaltending-defence-not-nearly-up-to-standard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/291513\/","title":{"rendered":"Oilers quarter-mark report: Goaltending, defence not nearly up to standard"},"content":{"rendered":"

EDMONTON \u2014\u00a0Mattias Ekholm was asked about the merits of a team that\u2019s stumbling along as clumsily as his Edmonton Oilers<\/a> are, yet is still collecting enough points not to be buried out West. He acknowledged, and we paraphrase, it\u2019s better than the alternative.<\/p>\n

Then Ekholm added: \u201cConversely, a real good team will come out of this thing and get firing. That\u2019s what we\u2019re looking at.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time Ekholm\u2019s head hit the pillow that night, his Oilers had been boot-stomped 5-1 by the last-place Buffalo Sabres. The Oilers ranked 31st\u00a0in the National Hockey League in 5-on-5 goal share, and had four regulation wins in the first 21 games of their season.<\/p>\n

Pathetic? Complacent? Poorly constructed? Over the hill?<\/p>\n

Pick your descriptor \u2014 the Oilers have been an awful hockey team for most of Q1.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of it is us understanding that we\u2019ve played a lot of hockey in the last two years, and we can\u2019t just coast through the regular season,\u201d Ekholm said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to fight. It\u2019s a hard league, and you can\u2019t just put your skates out (over the boards) and think that you\u2019re going to win games.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s on us veterans and leaders who have been on this team for a while now. We\u2019ve got to understand that it\u2019s not just going to come to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most Encouraging Development:\u00a0The pickings are slim.<\/p>\n

The brightest star has been free-agent addition Jack Roslovic<\/a> \u2014\u00a0he\u2019s been Edmonton\u2019s best winger, ranking third on the team in goals (seven) and fifth in points (15). A great pick-up at $1.5 million, he looks excellent next to Leon Draisaitl.<\/p>\n

Rookie winger Matt Savoie<\/a> has been a nice surprise and looks like a nice prospect, though five points and a minus-6 in 21 games isn\u2019t exactly Calder Trophy stuff.<\/p>\n

After that, there have been far more underachievers than the opposite.<\/p>\n

Most concerning development:\u00a0Where to start?<\/p>\n

Trent Frederic<\/a>, who has ghosted his new team since arriving at the trade deadline last season? In 44 games as an Oilers (playoffs included), Frederic has 2-3-5. He has just one point in 21 starts this season.<\/p>\n

Evan Bouchard, who took about 18 games to find an acceptable level of defensive play? He\u2019s tied for fifth among NHL defencemen with 16 points, but is still a minus-5, worst among the top-40 scorers on defence.<\/p>\n

David Tomasek, the long-shot, 29-year-old European who has been healthy-scratched for six of the last nine games? He has three points, is a minus-7, and will have a hard time holding a roster spot when one of Kasperi Kapanen or Ryan Nugent-Hopkins returns from injury.<\/p>\n

Darnell Nurse<\/a>, who doesn\u2019t play tough enough, hasn\u2019t defended well, and doesn\u2019t have much else in his game that even remotely justifies being a $9.25 million defenceman? He\u2019s a huge part of this team, leading the Oilers in 5-on-5 ice time. When he\u2019s this undependable, the Oilers won\u2019t win many.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe defended really well last year \u2014\u00a0one of the best defensive teams,\u201d head coach Kris Knoblauch said this week. \u201cRight now, we\u2019re just OK at that. If you want to be a really good team, we\u2019ve got to be better defensively.\u201d<\/p>\n

Top-six forwards:\u00a0Grade C.<\/p>\n

McDavid and Draisaitl have 54 points between them. They\u2019re always going to be OK offensively.<\/p>\n

Nugent-Hopkins had a great start, a point-per-game in 16 games, though a minus-11 tells a different tale. Roslovic has been fantastic.<\/p>\n

Mangiapane brings the grade down, and missing Zach Hyman for all but two games this season is also a big factor.<\/p>\n

Bottom-six forwards: D-minus<\/p>\n

The steady Adam Henrique was anchored with Frederic and Mangiapane in a 5-1 loss at Buffalo Monday, while the fourth line of Noah Philp between Mattias Janmark and Curtis Lazar gave the Oilers nine forgettable minutes.<\/p>\n

There is no identity here, no toughness, no offence, and overall, a team that\u2019s been top-five in the NHL in rush attempts in the last three seasons ranks 15th this season. Yecch.<\/p>\n

This is supposed to be a unit that could stabilize another Stanley Cup run. A veteran group that is pressure-tested, not too old, and should provide the foundation for a team that can feel safe in taking some chances offensively.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt starts with our defensive zone, for sure,\u201d Ekholm said. \u201cLimiting chances and goals against. I know we have firepower to score goals \u2014\u00a0I\u2019m not too worried about that. I just want to make sure that we come back to a defensive game that we can be proud of, and limits us having to score five or six goals to win a game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, it\u2019s been a season of botched break-outs, opponents standing unmarked in front of a hapless Oilers goalie, of Connor McDavid<\/a> being abused by opponents who face zero pushback, and a top-four that\u2019s been lost more often than found in Q1.<\/p>\n

Bouchard\u2019s travails have been noted; Ekholm\u2019s game has been spotty at best; Nurse may be having the worst start of his career, and Jake Walman<\/a> has been all over the place \u2014\u00a0but not in the right place nearly often enough.<\/p>\n

Do they miss defensive coach Paul Coffey? You be the judge of that.<\/p>\n

What other grade would you give two goalies who have forged the worst 5-on-5 saves percentage in the NHL (.876), and the second-worst in all situations (.865)?<\/p>\n

Yes, with the play of the team in front of them, getting their stats into the middle third of the NHL would be a Herculean task for Stuart Skinner<\/a> and Calvin Pickard<\/a>. But if ever a team need someone to step up in goal, the Oilers are that team.<\/p>\n

Pickard\u2019s play is particularly disturbing. His .830 save percentage is dead last among goalies who have played seven games or more. So is his goals-against average (4.17). You can\u2019t get any worse than worst, and suddenly GM Stan Bowman \u2014\u00a0tasked with fixing the issues with his No. 1 \u2014\u00a0has backup problems as well.<\/p>\n

Skinner has been merely OK, which won\u2019t cut it again this season. Flashes of \u201cgood enough\u201d are erased when the inconsistencies return. In the end, an .889 saves percentage is just more of the same \u2014\u00a0and the same isn\u2019t good enough for an Edmonton team that needs more to get over the top.<\/p>\n

Most Improved Player: Matt Savoie<\/p>\n

Best Defensive Player: N\/A<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014\u00a0Mattias Ekholm was asked about the merits of a team that\u2019s stumbling along as clumsily as his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-291513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}