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My own pick? Oilers in five
The view of the Hockey News is not shared by many others.
Over at the Moneypuck website, the Oilers are the favourite to win the Cup, given a 13.3 per cent chance, ahead of Colorado, 12.4 per cent, and Boston, 12.1 per cent.
At the Athletic, writers Dom Luszczyszyn, Shayna Goldman and Sean Gentille have the Oilers over the Kings: “Edmonton should win this one, but if last year’s matchup was any indication, the Oilers will have to earn every inch of ice to get there.”
They give Edmonton a 69 per cent chance of winning, with the Kings at 31 per cent. “The Oilers are the rightful favourite in this series. Their best players are somehow better than ever before, and the rest of the roster is more balanced and supported. But Edmonton is not the only team that improved this year. The Kings, who almost disrupted McDavid and the Oilers last spring, are stronger than the team that lost in seven games last time. They’ve progressed from where they started the regular season, too. That makes for a really interesting series that has some upset potential.”
At the Daily Faceoff, writer Mike Gould predicts Edmonton in four. “This year’s Oilers almost feel like a team of destiny. What exactly that destiny is remains to be seen. Perhaps they’ll go out in a fiery blaze like the 2019 Tampa Bay Lightning. But for our purposes, we’ll say they continue their dominance from the stretch drive into their first-round series. Skinner will stand on his head and McDavid will record 10 points on the power play as the Oilers win Games 1, 2, 3, and 4.”
At DraftKings, a betting site, writer Benjamin Zweiman also goes with the favoured Oilers: “The Oilers are heavy favourites over the Kings in the 2-3 matchup out of the Pacific Division. While the Oilers only finished five points head of L.A. in the regular season, Edmonton is the hottest hockey team in the League entering the postseason. The Oilers have won nine straight games and 14 of their past 15 contests. Connor McDavid is just going to be too much for the Kings to handle… He’s elevating the entire team and the Oilers have made moves to shore up the defense by adding Mattias Ekholm… There isn’t much value betting this line. The Oilers should take care of the Kings and advance pretty easily. It would be shocking to see a team this hot with the best player in the world go out early.”
My take
I will say this: the Edmonton Oilers of the first half of the NHL season would have lost to the Kings. It might not have been close.
That Oilers team had outstanding attacking from Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman, especially on the power play, but its penalty killing was bad-to-atrocious, and it gave up to many 5-alarm chances, shots that go in about one third of the time.
In the first 41 games of the year, Edmonton gave up 281 5-alarm shots, 6.9 per game.
In the second 41 games, that dropped to 227 5-alarm shots, just 5.5 per game.
Five-alarm shots are a subset of Grade A shots, which go in about 25 per cent of the time. In the second half, the Oilers had a Grade A shot differential of +4.6 per game.
Little wonder the Oilers out-scored the opposition 4.4 to 2.9 goals per game on average in the final 41 games and earned 64 points, a 0.78 points percentage.
In the first half, Edmonton earned just 45 points, a mediocre 0.55 points percentage on 3.5 goals for and 3.3 goals against per game.
Almost every Oilers player improved in some way from the first to the second half.
At the Cult of Hockey, we measure this by looking at the two-way play of individual players at even strength. Almost every single player saw an improvement when it came to creating Grade A shots, or defending against them, or both.
The most improved players from the first to the second half were, in order, Devin Shore, Klim Kostin, Derek Ryan, Ryan McLeod, Warren Foegele, Brett Kulak and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, all of them with massive and significant improvements in their two-way performance.
But also improved were Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Dylan Holloway, Kailer Yamamoto, Evan Bouchard and Philip Broberg.
The only players who had significant drops from the first half to the second half were Zach Hyman and Evander Kane, who both had to fight through injuries in the second half.
On top of this improved play at even strength, the Edmonton penalty kill also improved dramatically once Vincent Desharnias and Mattis Ekholm shored up the back-end.
Desharnais and especially Ekholm were also strong players at even strength, while goalie Stuart Skinner picked up his game down the stretch and provided the team with calm and confident net-minding against some tough teams.
In the end, it’s possible, of course, that the Kings could beat the Oilers. Puck luck and injuries can play a huge factor in any series, not to mention goaltending, hot or cold. But if this series were to be played ten times, my own bet is the Oilers would win eight of ten.
These Oilers we’ve seen in the second half are big, fast, mean, skilled, strong on the PK, brilliant on the power play and sound enough in net. They can beat you with offence and defence. They can pound out a dump-and-thump win against a trapping team. They can win a track meet against a speedy team. They have a handful of players in their hockey prime, Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Darnell Nurse and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who are in no mood to be denied.
My bet is the Oilers go all the way and win the Cup.
Against L.A., I’ll predict Oilers in five games.
You?
