The Oilers New Defense – Top Pairing?

While the mainstream Edmonton media is busy touting all of the Oilers prospects and their hopes of making the team this fall I’ve been busy worrying about what exactly is left to happen with the Oilers and the product they’re going to ice when the 2014/15 season starts.

The prospects camp has gives us some good reading from the folks at the Edmonton Journal and Edmonton Sun

Darnell Nurse (Journal, Sun)

Bogdan Yakimov (Journal)

Mitch Moroz (Sun)

Jujhar Khiara (Sun)

Laurent Brossoit (Journal, Sun)

Greg Chase (Journal, Sun)

But it’s not the prospects I worry about, that cupboard is full, my worries are with the actual NHL product. Much has been written as of late about the need for a second line center, and it’s glaring. But even with the editions made on defense my confidence is still waivering.

The Oilers added Nikita Nikitan, Mark Fayne and Keith Aulie and while they’re all NHL veterans, an improvement forsure, none of them scream top pairing. In fact if you look at their numbers IMO they are all 4/5 defenders.

Let’s have a quick look at the defensive depth chart (this is my version, there are others out there from people smarter than I that are different to how I have them ranked)

There is your top eight folks, Klefbom is going to start the season in the AHL where he can play top pairing minutes and get used to the tougher assignments (proper development).

Petry played way over his head last season and couldn’t handle the minutes, but unless he is traded, as is rumored, he’s probably the best bet to be the #1 right D, along with last year’s partner and sophomore Marincin.

Nikitan and Fayne I’ve got as the second pairing, they’re experienced and bigger and hopefully be able to play some tough shutdown minutes. On the third pairing I’ve got Schultz and Ference, Ference is a good vet but his foot speed is slowing and his first pass isn’t where one would like it to be. Schultz will be nice and insulated on the third pairing and his defensive game should benefit from facing easier competition.

But There’s a Problem Here

None of the defensemen, either from last year or the new additions have shown they can handle the kind of minutes that are required to be a legit top pairing guy. Let’s have a look at my projected top six;

*I was going to use CorsiFor Rel but the Oilers Team possession stats were so bad that it doesn’t get the story across very well*

Alright so we can very easily see that there isn’t a rear guard on the team that has played the minutes of a top pairing defenseman. The top 25 defensemen in the league are all above 18.0 TOI/60, while Justin Schultz’s 17.87 comes in tops for the Oilers and 30^th overall in the NHL last year. Anyone that watched the games knows that Jultz wasn’t good enough to be playing those types of minutes, which is why most have him falling down the depth chart to start next season. Nikitan’s ice time at evens is very low if he is to be considered a top 4 defenseman, but he gets a small boost in the possession stats. Petry and Ference are clear 3/4 guys when it comes to ice time as well but when you add together quality of competition along with Corsi both played over their heads last season.

Back to Petry and Ference, these two were up against the toughest competition but didn’t fare well against them with 46 and 43% corsi ratings respectively. Marincin who played 44 games faced nearly the same QOC and had the best Corsi on the list of returning Oilers.

Now Fayne on the other hand, while he didn’t exactly get top pairing minutes he faces roughly equal competition and his possession numbers were terrific. Zone starts were decent too – Tyler Dellow wrote a good piece today were he talks about the effectiveness of using zone starts to analyze defensive performance – but zone starts don’t necessarily tell the whole story, was the player caught in the d-zone frequently or was the coach putting the player out for an important defensive faceoff?

What is He Getting At?

Basically it’s my opinion that while even though MacT has improved the depth of defense for the franchise, there still isn’t a clear first pairing option. Head coach Dallas Eakins is going to have a tough job of divvying out the ice time by committee, there won’t be a pairing that you can rely on to put up against the other teams top players, everyone will be equally responsible for shutting opponents down.

So now we’ve got some NHL veterans but I’m not so sure things are going to be as improved as people are hoping.

Thanks for Reading

*If you’re confused by this article don’t worry, I’m still trying to wrap my head around how to properly explain these fancy stats and spent some time confused myself while writing it. I’m not Rom or Boris that’s for sure. If you have any comments, or suggestions please feel free to let me know. I’m all about expanding my knowledge and if one, two or all of you can do that then it is more than welcome. Also I’m not the only one. See below*