Will the Oilers miss Eberle’s goals?

Jordan Eberle is a productive goal scorer. It doesn’t matter if you like his style of play or not, the fact is he can score. He produced 165 goals in his time with the Oilers, 24th most in NHL since the 2010/2011 season. That is excellent production.

Eberle only scored 20 goals this past season, his lowest total in a full 82-game season. Even in a down season he was still tied for 85th in goals across the NHL. Today, the Oilers don’t have a full-time right winger who has proven he can score 25 goals consistently. Leon Draisaitl scored 29 goals last year, but he played half the season at centre. I don’t see him as a regular winger moving forward, although I’m sure he will play some this season with Connor McDavid.

The Oilers have some younger players they hope can replace Eberle’s production, but I’m not sure it needs to come from one player.

Eberle’s career numbers are better than his 20-31-51 season last year, and that is a good thing for the gentlemen looking to replace him. The reality is the Oilers have McDavid and Draisaitl moving forward. They will be looked upon to provide a bulk of the offence. Milan Lucic has scored 20+ goals and 50+ points five times. He had a down season scoring 5×5 last year and he’s only 29 years old so I expect him to improve there, but his overall numbers were good. He can still produce. Patrick Maroon is coming off a career year, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has been challenged by Todd McLellan and his staff to rediscover his offensive creativity. Those five will be expected to be the offensive leaders.

The players looking to replace Eberle’s 20 goals won’t have the pressure of being go-to scorers, at least not this season. If one emerges as a legit threat that is a great, but none of them will have the expectations to score 20-25 goals.

Instead of looking at a one-for-one replacement, I think it is better to look at how much production the Oilers need from the RW. Here is the Oilers production from RW last year.

Player                          GP           G        PTS
Eberle                          82           20        51
Leon Draisaitl            43           15         44
Zack Kassian              79            7          24
Anton Slepyshev       41            4          10
Tyler Pitlick               31            8           11
Jesse Puljujarvi        28            1            8
Iiro Pakarinen          14             2           4
Total                      318          57        152

In a full season there are 328 games played among the four right wingers.

**Last season, the other ten were split between Matt Hendricks, Jujhar Khaira and Anton Lander, but I did not go back through each game to figure out which games they played RW. Draisaitl’s first game with McDavid exclusively was January 5th versus Boston. There were a few games from then on where he would split his time with McDavid, when McLellan switched lines, but he played the vast majority of the second half on the right wing.

I suspect we could see Draisaitl play both centre and RW this season, so including his games played last year was key.

Draisaitl was very productive with McDavid and I’d be stunned if they don’t produce whenever McLellan decides to play them together.

For argument sake, let’s say Draisaitl plays half a season on the RW. That leaves 287 games for the other players to slot in on RW. Here is the production from the RW last year in 275 games.

Player                          GP           G        PTS
Eberle                          82           20        51
Zack Kassian              79            7          24
Anton Slepyshev       41            4          10
Tyler Pitlick               31            8           11
Jesse Puljujarvi        28            1            8
Iiro Pakarinen          14             2           4
Total                      275          42        108

Right now the Oilers have Slepyshev, Kassian, Pakarinen, Puljujarvi and Ryan Strome, who would vie for those 287 games. Pakarinen is likely the odd man out when the season begins.

So the RW only needs to produce 42 goals to match last season — not a daunting total. Remember the Oilers were eighth in goals scored last season, 243, and they were tied for eighth in EV goals with 166. Even with Eberle having a down season, the Oilers were not starving for goals. They finally have depth. Their defence scored 35 goals, a jump from 24 goals in both 2016 and 2015, an increase of 45%. Most would expect McDavid, Draisaitl, RNH, Lucic and Maroon to produce the bulk of the goals and the defence should be close to last year’s totals.

When you break down last year’s RW production, I don’t see them being desperate to find goals, but they will need solid production from all four.

Kassian said in our recent interview he expects to score ten, hopefully more. I doubt he will have as many goals disallowed next year as he had this past season, so ten seems realistic.

Slepyshev had four in 41 games last year which prorates to eight in a full season. Would it be unrealistic to expect him to score one more goal every 41 games and reach ten? He gained a lot of confidence from his play in the playoffs, and I could see him starting on RW with Draisaitl and Lucic.

Puljujarvi scored in his first NHL game and then went goalless in 27. He won’t repeat that. I don’t believe he is a lock to stick all season in Edmonton, but he will be given every opportunity early on.

When Draisaitl plays the middle, then Strome or RNH will move to the wing with McDavid. I’d hope either of them could pot ten goals playing half a season with McDavid. Jussi Jokinen can also play the right side, and when line juggling or injuries occur, I’m sure we will see him play 20-30 games on the right side.

Just playing the odds, you’d expect one of Strome, Puljujarvi or Slepyshev to score at least 15 and likely more.

Unless one of them has a Maroon-like breakout season, I don’t expect any of these players to score 25 goals like Eberle averaged in his tenure in Edmonton, but it isn’t necessary they do so this season. They just need to find enough offence to match last year’s totals for the entire right side.

The right side is the least experienced and has the most question marks of the three forward positions right now, but regardless of who skates there this season, they don’t have to be great for the Oilers to have success. Of course a breakout year from one of them would be great, but because of the other offensive weapons, the Oilers aren’t desperate for one player to replace Eberle’s goals.

Which RW, excluding Draisaitl, do you think will lead the Oilers in scoring from the right side?