Ground To Dust

The strength of the Oilers forward corps is the three scoring line concept that has seen McDavid, Nugent-Hopkins, and Draisaitl featured on their own offensive units. Now with Lucic assigned to Draisaitl’s wing, the offense is more spread out than ever. However, there is also a considerable amount of pressure placed on Edmonton’s fourth line. Are they handling their duties well enough?

At first glance, the offensive input from Pitlick is hard to be ignored. He looked good enough to earn a shot on the third line after Kassian went down to injury. His four goals and 21 shots on net from the fringe of the roster have been a welcome addition and there will be more to write about Pitlick if he keeps it up.

For Lander and Letestu, their key contributions to the Oilers are less about offense, though. These two are leading the team’s regular faceoff men in total faceoff percentage. That’s the combined percentage on the even strength, power play, and shorthanded. To try to keep things focused on the role these two fourth line guys are playing we’re going to limit the faceoff numbers to even strength. The actual order of total even Strength faceoffs taken goes like this:

McDavid 171 (45.0%)

Nugent-Hopkins 156 (51.3%)

Draisaitl 154 (50.0%)

Letestu 119 (47.9%)

Lander 84 (58.3%)

So, yes, Letestu and Lander separately take the fourth and fifth most faceoffs on the club at even strength. However, unlike the three centermen ahead of them, they largely play on the same line together and they play significantly fewer minutes than they do as well. If we look at those numbers not as individual faceoffs taken but as a unit, we would have to combine the Letestu and Lander draws and that unit would be leading the team.

That’s the role the fourth line plays on the Oilers. They are there to soak up faceoffs as much as possible. As you can imagine, if your role is to take faceoffs and you happen to be pretty good at them, that’s also going to mean plenty in the defensive zone. And, as bottom sixers, that’s going to mean plenty on the penalty kill. For Lander and Letestu both of those things are true. They spend plenty of time on the PK and a large percentage of their time in the defensive zone.

How large of a percentage are they starting shifts in their own zone? Stats.hockeyanalysis.com breaks up zone starts into offensive zone, neutral zone, and defensive zone and gives a percentage for each for each player. Lander and Letestu have simultaneously the lowest percentage of offensive and neutral zone faceoffs and naturally from there have the highest percentage of defensive zone starts. Letestu and Lander are starting 54.2% and 53.2% of their shifts in the defensive zone respectively.

It’s not just in relation to the other members of the Oilers that Lander and Letestu are getting ground into dust. Of all the forwards who have played at least 100 minutes 5v5, these two Oiler fourth liners are fifth and sixth respectively in the entire NHL for defensive zone faceoff percentage. Only Montreal, Chicago, Nashville, and Buffalo have forwards with more than 50% DZFO.

They’re winning the faceoffs or at least sawing it off, but after that the line’s usage is clearly affecting their overall effectiveness. Overall 12 forwards have logged at least 100 5v5 minutes on the Oil. The trio of Lander-Pitlick-Letestu has the lowest shot attempt percentage among Oiler forwards by a significant margin. Of the three, Lander is ranked 10th and has the highest Corsi For percentage among them with just 42.8%. Kassian is ranked 9th and has a CF% of 48.1%.

Can there be any doubt that the way they are being used is preventing them from keeping the shot attempt share more even? As an extension, can we doubt that by the fourth line soaking up all that evil that it, in turn, frees up more opportunity for the other lines to perform better? You would like to see the 4th line start to perform better in shot attempts (and in turn Scoring Chances), and maybe when Hendricks returns they will.

It’s a thankless job being on this team’s fourth line. It carries a disproportionate relationship with responsibility and glory. The guys in the top nine will get the glory. The other three are going to spend a boatload of time in their own zone and pray they can keep the puck out long enough for the other guys to catch their breath.