Secondary Woes?

Posted 12:00 PM ET | Comments 2

Great to see the Oil get a convincing 5-2 win last night against the Arizona Coyotes; it helped calm the sea of fans screaming about the lack of secondary scoring as of late. The Oilers are 10th in the league in scoring even with players like Lucic, Nuge, Eberle, and Pouliot drastically underperforming. What's going on here?

Let's break it down by looking at the Oilers top three scorers, followed by the next 5 and see how they compare to other playoff teams in the West.

Connor McDavid 18-45-63
Leon Draisaitl 21-29-50
Jordan Eberle 11-21-32
Top Three Total 50-95-145

Well for starters it's easy to be a top 10 scoring team when you have the league's leading scorer on your team. Plenty has been made of Draisaitl's year for all the right reasons and Jordan Eberle's for all the wrong. Here are the next 6.

Milan Lucic- 11-20-31
Patrick Maroon 20-8-28
Ryan Nugent Hopkins 11-15-26
Mark Letestu 11-14-25
Andrej Sekera 7-18-25
Oscar Klefbom 9-14-23
Next Six 69-89-158

Plenty to break down here. I'll simply say Lucic and Nuge are not where you would hope them to be, Maroon and Letestu are exceeding expectations, and Sekera and Klefbom are producing exactly like one should hope they should.

Here are the Sharks top 8 scorers

Brett Burns 24-35-59
Joe Pavelski 18-30-48
Logan Couture 19-19-38
Top Three 61-84-145

------------------------------------------
Joe Thornton 5-32-37
Patrick Marleau 20-13-33
Joel Ward 6-16-22
Mikkel Boedker 6-13-19
Marc-Edouard Vlasic 3-16-19
Paul Martin 3-15-18
Next Six 43-105-148

I'll admit I was a bit surprised here. The Oilers and Sharks exactly match production in the top 3 with a total of 145 points. The Sharks have scored 11 more goals with the Oilers notching 11 more assists. The Sharks win this matchup because of goals. Whether it's Eberle, Lucic or even Nuge, someone needs to be more productive.

Looking at the next six though... wow. The Oilers have scored 18 more goals through their lineup. The Oilers are getting more production out of their backend (with the exception of that freak Burns) which is something that hasn't been written much over the past 10 years.

Here is the other competitor in the Pacifc:

Ryan Kesler 19-25-44
Ryan Getzlaf 9-33-42
Corey Perry 11-29-40
Top Three 39-87-126
-----------------------------------------
Jakob Silfverberg 17-19-36
Rickard Rakell 22-10-32
Cam Fowler 11-19-30
Andrew Cogliano 11-14-25
Antoine Vermette 8-14-22
Nick Ritchie 11-7-18
Next Six 80-83-163

This is fairly opposite the Sharks. The Oilers top 3 are producing way more than the Ducks (Perry and Getzlaf are having a rough time) but the Ducks next 6 are producing more than both the Sharks and the Oilers. Interesting to point out that the Ducks only have one defenseman in this whole group.

What does this all mean?

There are obviously some deficiencies with this Oilers squad. That is bound to happen when the team has missed the playoffs for the past decade. The Oilers aren't the only team in the league who has underperforming players. That is not an excuse. Eberle, Nuge, and Lucic are not producing enough and the team is hurting because of it. The good news is that the Oilers have other players not named McDavid and Draisaitl who are helping carry the load.

Thanks for reading!

Filed Under: oilers edmonton mcdavid sharks ducks

Hall Fan

February 17, 2017 11:42 PM ET | Delete
Take a look at the Oilers last season ppg vs this season. Seems they were WAY better then bearing in mind that key players had big injuries and it was basically the first years for Leon and McDavid and they are much more developed this year. They are needing, sorry to say it, another player like them. Like Hall. Lucic was their hope and he was a bust. I say try Hanzal and Sharp as rentals and address this in the offseason with a hard look at Drouin.

ChonDerry