A Tale of Two Teams

A friend and I had a discussion (actually my cousin/almost brother @nessler37) on Monday night about the state of the Oilers and what could have been if things would have broken a different way. The talk turned to the example of Colorado in comparison to Edmonton and I had to ask myself, what are the differences?

If you are a regular reader over at Lowetide, regular enough that you pay attention to the comment section, you may have seen a discussion on this very topic. As it so happens that conversation was started because of an article in/at the Globe and Mail by Eric Duhatschek. Here is the important quote…

What the Oilers hoped would happen to their young team did actually happen – but to the Colorado Avalanche, a team with similar assets on paper that has been a far superior team where it counts, on the ice.

Like the Oilers, the Avalanche took a deliberate step backward a few years ago in order to replenish the prospect pipeline. Both teams have lineups sprinkled with blue-chip high-end draft choices – Edmonton with three No. 1 overall choices, Colorado with three in the top three over the past five seasons.

The difference is that the Avalanche, under coach Patrick Roy, has turned a lot of the potential belonging to Matt Duchene, Gabe Landeskog and Nathan MacKinnon into genuine, bona fide NHL production.

So Monday night, after my ‘what could have been’ convo, I started gathering some numbers (courtesy of Extra Skater). What I wanted to see, similar to what I had covered earlier in the year, was how do these two teams compare in the underlying numbers department? I also wanted to build on the comment that caught my eye over at Lowetide’s. What is the story, the tale of two teams?

First thing I did was build myself some charts comparing both team’s 10 game rolling averages for a select few items. The first one is the 10 game Fenwick For percentages. Here is the chart…

Next thing I did was build myself another chart. This one shows the 10 game save percentages of both teams…

And then I built another. This one shows the 10 game shooting percentage of both teams…

The first thing that jumps out at me is the first 12 games of the season. Fenwick wise there wasn’t a whole lot separating the two teams and both were running a fair jump below average (50%). Over a season, if you are one that follows and trusts the numbers and probable outcomes, you’d probably be inclined to say some improvement was needed and success could be fleeting. For the short term the outcomes can and did vary wildly, as they normally do short term, all depending on a few variables and strokes of luck. The great thing about these two similarly constructed teams is that the other two charts show some drastic differences and some comparative evidence to the different outcomes. It is no secret that Edmonton’s goal tending sunk their early season hopes in spite of shooting an otherworldly 11% (or so) average (over 3% above league average) and conversely Colorado’s mediocre start was negated and spun into a stellar early record because of some other worldly keeping.

As we travel along the charts we really can see the season play out in the chart lines of the Oilers. An early goal tending crisis likely sapped them of any confidence they could have gained with some modest, start of the season success. For the Oilers, the save percentage situation did not approach the league average until some point around the game 28 segment. Over that same span we can see the the FF% languished at the bottom of the league in the 44-47% range and again start to improve some time during the game 28 segment. Couple that with an absolute crash in the team’s shooting percentage, where it was actually sub 5% for a period, and you end up with a team that was sunk before the calendar turned to December, if not earlier.

Now have a look at Colorado and you see the exact opposite of what we see in the Oilers. They rode an early hot streak and important burst of confidence, born out of success, to an almost sure playoff spot at this point. Colorado’s Fenwick numbers have lumbered in the lower half of the league all year but the results have been undoubtedly propped up by above average puck stopping and a pretty consistent run of above average shooting percentages that, if looked into a bit deeper, would probably show they haven’t suffered from any serious team wide scoring slumps that could send a young team off the rails. The results are markedly different and it makes one wonder, what if the early cards flopped a little differently for the hometown team?

The Edmonton Oilers and Colorado Avalanche both hold some outstanding young talent. Hall, Nuge, Eberle and Yakupov headline in Edmonton and MacKinnon, Duchene, Landeskog and O’Reilly play the lead roles in the mile high city. There are different dimensions among the two groups and Colorado does appear more balanced, but the skill and potential is undeniable for each of the teams. Both Edmonton and Colorado entered the season with questions on the blue line, both groups missing that formidable #1 force that the top teams of the west boast. Again the team from Colorado appears to be ahead at this point. Unsure bets such as Tyson Barrie and career minor league players Andre Benoit and Nick Holden have surely had more success than what was expected. How different would it be if Belov, Larsen and Grebeshkov could be counted on for 20 effective minutes a night. My obvious guess is that the outcomes would be a lot different.

I struggle with how much weight to put on the intangible elements of the game of hockey. Confidence is undoubtedly an important ingredient for a successful team and season. Two young teams, two rookie head coaches. One coach spinning some early season luck and success into a message that the players could buy into, the other left stunned and wet, wiping Gatorade from his swooping coif. Colorado’s goal tending is undoubtedly the main source of the positive outcome but the confidence of winning also should be considered a factor that helped their team along the way. Flip the coin to Edmonton’s side and you see the exact opposite. They came into the season under very similar circumstances but in no way do the results mirror each other. The Oilers have appeared listless, lost and lacking confidence in both themselves and their coach many a night. One really does wonder if the tale of two teams would have been different were it not for a little less luck for one group and a little more luck for the other.

What the example of Colorado does is give me some hope for next year’s version of the Oilers. A couple solid blueline acquisitions, some development leaps for the forward group, maybe a physical 2L center… Is it unreasonable to wish? Couple those with some consistent goal tending from the Oilers new tandem and it may lend to us the ability of discussing what is going right instead of wrong. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to talk about who they’ll be meeting in the first round of the playoffs this time next year instead of the annual “who shall we draft and where do they go from here” questions. One can only hope.

Thanks for reading.

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