Making The Grade – Nail Yakupov

The “Making The Grade” series keeps on chugging along here, and today we have talked about both Ryan Smyth (http://www.theoilersrig.com/2013/11/making-grade-ryan-smyth/) and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (http://www.theoilersrig.com/2013/11/making-grade-ryan-nugent-hopkins/). Now, we examine the most debated Oilers forward, Nail Yakupov.

Offensive:

The 2012 first overall draft pick has struggled to a degree this season offensively. He had a terrible point drought to start the season, and failed to even create chances for the first ten or so games. As a result, Nail lost ice time and became the lightning rod for Oilers fans. Yakupov slowly turned the corner, nabbing an assist here and a goal there, but really didn’t look like the player most expected offensively until two/three weeks ago.

He’s only found the back of the net four times this season, which is a disappointment considering we are two months into the season. He’s added only five assists and only has nine points in 25 games this season. Let’s be honest here, that is far from the production that a player of Nail’s skill set should be churning out.

Yakupov not only wasn’t getting the points, but he was struggling to even generate chances, which was the real alarming thing. That all being said, Nail has changed since the San Jose game about two Friday’s ago and is starting to look like the player we expected. He’s starting to get points and create chances, so it appears he is coming out of this slump.

Overall though, it was a disappointing “semester” for Nail Yakupov offensively.

Overall offensive grade for Yakupov? 63, D-.

Defensive:

Yakupov is a pitiful -15 on the season. I’ve been on the record saying this before, and I do beleive it, +/- is the most skewed stat in hockey. That said, a -15 kind of says something about the player’s defensive game, it is flat out ugly. Yakupov was committing far too many turnovers and was on the ice for a lot of chances against.

He is an offensive minded player, a sniper by nature. I don’t expect Yakupov to have a tremendous defensive game, but this is bad. Yakupov tries too hard to create offense and as a result he commits too many turnovers. He tries to dangle every one in the defensive zone and ends up losing the puck to the opponent.

Things like trying too hard to create offense and positional play can be corrected. That said, Nail Yakupov was a train wreck defensively in the first quarter of the season. Was he the worst? No, but he certainly wasn’t very good.

Overall defensive grade for Yakupov, 60, D-.

Team Play:

Not much to say here. Yakupov caused a stir when his agent, Igor Larionov, complained about Nail’s ice time and even paid a visit to Edmonton to talk about it. It was a controversial week in Edmonton, and added extra heat to what was an already bad situation with the Oilers as a team.

Yakupov does seem like a good teammate however, and outside of that one blunder I think he has proven that. He brings a sense of enthusiasm to the table and brings an element to the power-play that makes anyone willing to pass to him a lot better. He has the ability to change the game, and seems to get along quite well with his teammates.

I don’t particularly like grading players on team play, but I think Yakupov has been fine here. Average player in this regard, which is fine.

Overall team play grade for Yakupov? 75, C.

Overall Grade: 66, D.

This grade seems about right to me. Yakupov really struggled the first cluster of games and was hurting the team more than helping it. That said, he has been able to turn it around recently to somewhat even things out. That all being said, he has only evened it out to a slightly below average first quarter. That, quite frankly, isn’t good enough.

A player like Yakupov needs to be a B/B+ player in order for this team to have success. As you can see, he is pretty far off from that. Yakupov has all the talent in the world, and I’m not ready to give up on him yet by any means. That said, Nail needs to be better in the second quarter and turn what was a tough start around. He’s got the talent to do it. It’s on him from this point on.