“The Edmonton Oilers power play is struggling” is not a sentence you often hear these days.
After all, this is a five-man top unit that has been the cream of the crop in the National Hockey League for the last number of years. Since Evan Bouchard became the power play quarterback in March 2023 through the end of the 2023-24 regular season, the Oilers unit operated at a 27.9 percent clip — the top unit in the league.
But the start of the 2024-25 season has been far from that number. They’ve scored on just 6.7 percent of their chances, going one-for-15.
The Oilers could not take advantage of either of their man advantages during Saturday’s matinee against the Dallas Stars. They had come in opportune times for the team to take the lead, late in the first and 14 minutes into the second, amid times when the Oilers at five-on-five were peppering Dallas, building momentum in the game.
Considering it took the Stars three seconds to score on their first power play, taking a 1-0 lead in the game they didn’t look back from, it’s hard to look at the Oilers’ struggling unit as anything other than costly.
After the game, Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch said the coaching staff was aware of these issues, and ready and willing to make adjustments.
“Besides putting the puck in the net, I’m sure we’ll evaluate, we’ll look at it,” said Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch. “We’re at the point where we got to be considering making some adjustments to it, just because there’s times where every power play is going to go through a stretch of not scoring.
“But we’ve gone six games in now, and we’re one-for-15. I’m not sure we do it right away, but it’s something that’s on our minds.”
It remains to be seen what the coaching staff would change, but one clear thing is they aren’t getting anywhere near the amount of shots on goal as previously. The sample size of six games this year is small, but comparing that time frame to since Bouchard took over, their shot attempt rate per hour of 101.1 is down from 117.3, while the actual amount of shots hitting the net has sharply declined from 63.9 per hour to 35.8 per hour. As a result, their scoring chance per hour rate has fallen from 69.8 to 54.8, with their expected goal rate dropping from 10.2 to 7.1.
For one, finding a way to create new lanes and new looks could be an important area to address. Could it be that after the Oilers’ power play has been dominant for so long, other teams are simply finding ways to beat them?
“I think at different times throughout the season, we’ve definitely gone through stretches like this,” Oilers forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, a part of that power play unit, said Monday, via the Oilers website. “Even to start last season, our power wasn’t where we wanted it to be, and it’s about sticking with it. But also, just upping the work rate and thinking of it more as five-on-five.
“They’re changing how much pressure they put on, how many guys they have up top, and different little adjustments. So I think something that our power has been good at over the years is being able to adjust on the fly and make plays. We call it road hockey – you’re just playing and finding things that are there and available. Of course, we want to sharpen up and if teams are going to put pressure on us, we’ve got to be sharper and faster.”
Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist, making up one-half of the DFO DFS Report. He can be followed on Twitter at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach@thenationnetwork.com.
