The Oilers after 48 games part 2 – Defense and Goaltending

Yesterday I looked at the core group of forwards and how they’ve done through 48 games this season compared to last year’s lock out shortened 48 game season. Tonight I’m going to have a look at the defensemen that have returned from last year and goaltender Devan Dubnyk. Let’s get started

The Defense

There are only three defensemen on the 2013/14 version of the Edmonton Oilers after Craig MacTavish traded Ladi Smid. The new defense can quite often be blamed on the team’s lack of success this season, but compared to last year how are they doing?

Justin Schultz

In 12/13 Justin Schultz absolutely lit up the American Hockey league during the lockout scoring 48 points in only 48 games. When the lockout was over and J-schultz joined the NHL club he again managed to score at a decent clip, adding 8 goals and 19 assists over 48 games. This had Schultz in a tie for 5^th in rookie scoring.

This season Justin Schultz’s numbers through 48 games are quite similar. Justin has played just 40 games so far and has contributed 19 points on the season so far. The thing with Schultz is it seems that lately he is starting to focus more on his defensive play. He had an awful start to the season when nothing was going his way, the points weren’t coming and it seems as if he was digging the puck out of his own net more often than not. Early in the season he was averaging about 18 minute per night but in the game the other night against the Penguins he had a season high with just over 27 minutes, a sign of Coach Eakins growing trust in the young defender.

Jeff Petry

Last season I liked what Petry brought to the table, his continued development seemed to be trending in the right direction. At 6.03 and around 200 pounds it looked like Petry was willing to use his size advantage to his advantage and began playing the body with more frequency. Points wise Petry was exactly where you would want your number 3/4 d man, scoring 3 goals and assisting on 9 for 12 points.

The points are nearly identical this season he’s currently at 3-8-11 but is a low minus 12. He’s been decent but he’s playing minutes over his head. Something that Alan Hull from Copper and Blue mentioned to us last night on Oilers Rig Radio was that he’s made Martin Marincin a better player, and there’s some truth to that. He’s been playing about 5 less minutes a game as of late and isn’t making those game deciding giveaways we’ve been almost expecting this season.

Nick Schultz

Nick Schultz was brought in at the trade deadline back in the 11/12 season in exchange for Tom Gilbert. I was pretty high on this move by Steve Tambellini as I believed that Nick would be that good skating, hard hitting stay at home defensemen that would be able to be steadily in the Oilers top 4. In the 12/13 season Schultz was all over the line up. He was in the top 4 out of necessity much of the time, but on a team that wasn’t that good he put up 9 points through 48 games but had the second worst minus 13 on the team.

This season things have been much the same for Nick Schultz he’s played on all three defensive pairings and currently finds himself on the bottom pairing with Anton Belov. His point production has struggled but is a bit more where I expected it would be, he sits with 3 assists after 46 games and again he’s at the bottom of the list when it comes to plus minus at 16.

The Goalie

Wow what a flip in performance between last season and this one. Devan Dubnyk had a pretty good stats line last season, with a 2.57 goals against average and a .920 save percentage. Those are decent numbers, while the GAA wasn’t as low as one would like it was still respectable and a sign that Dubey was on an upward track to being a true number 1 NHL goalie.

Then jump to this season, where Dubnyk flopped out of the gate and has been one of the biggest detriments to team success this season. His numbers are atrocious with a 3.36 GAA and a .894 sv% those are not the numbers we’d expected from Dubnyk this season. His play has been so poor that it has forced GM Craig MacTavish to go out and sign free agent Ilya Bryzgalov.

Sooooo….

This season is unfortunately a write off, the poor start and multiple 5 game losing streaks have brought us to where we are now. I’d venture to say that it’s a pretty safe bet there is another large personnel change over, starting in the front office and all the way down to the players on the ice. There are a lot of puzzle pieces left before this team will be back to chasing a playoff spot with any real hope.

Thanks For Reading