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Power Play Defencemen

By Jonathan Willis

Sep 12, 2016, 23:20 EDTUpdated:

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The Edmonton Oilers enter the 2016-17 season without a bona
fide first unit power play defenceman. Still, the team has some in-house
options for the coaching staff to look at.

Doubtless, general manager Peter Chiarelli would have liked
to add a power play defenceman this summer. He opted to make Adam Larsson his
primary target instead, trading the chance to land a power play quarterback for
a defensive stalwart instead. Asked
on July 1 about the power play, he left his options open:

I think at the end of the day you can build a power play by
committee. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t go out and get a right-shot D who can
run that power play. We’ve got some really skilled guys that are on the power
play, forwards, that you don’t necessarily need like a true, skilled
specialist. Doesn’t mean that we won’t try and get one. I’m really happy with
what we’ve done in the last few days. I’m going to let the dust settle a little
bit before we go out looking again.

On September 1, in an interview
with Bob Stauffer, Chiarelli was asked again about the right side of the
defence.

“I had some discussions over the early part of the summer,”
he said. “They kind of quieted out a little bit, and I’ll pick those up at some
point in the fall. I’d say for the foreseeable future I’m pretty much done.”

It’s possible that we’ll see an addition yet. It may come
through the waiver wire, as Adam Clendening did a year ago. A professional
tryout may be an option; Eric Gryba’s name is generally mentioned but Marek
Zidlicky would be a power play candidate.
As teams aim to comply with the salary cap, trades may open up, too. If
the Oilers are done, though, the team will have to build by committee.

The Incumbent: LD Andrej
Sekera

Sekera led all Oilers defencemen with 189 minutes of power
play ice-time. The “shinpad assassin” is actually a bona fide NHL power play
guy, though history shows he’s better-suited to a second unit role. His 3.19
points/hour at 5-on-4 over the last five seasons puts
him just ahead of players like Seth Jones, Ryan McDonagh and Erik Johnson, but well outside what we would expect from a good first unit man.

The Other Incumbent:
LD Oscar Klefbom

Klefbom has no track record on the power play in the NHL,
though the Oilers were clearly going to give him a shot last season; he ended
up averaging just a hair under 2:00 per game. He didn’t score as well as Sekera
did, but we haven’t seen enough to really have a firm grasp on what his true
talent level is.

By eye, Klefbom has some of the requisite skills: speed,
smarts, a decent shot, playmaking ability. He’s also been a pretty decent
5-on-5 scorer in the NHL. However, the last time he was a big point producer
over a full year was 2009-10, when he was playing U-18 hockey in Sweden.

The Newcomer: RD Adam
Larsson

Larsson’s big advantage is that he’s a right shot. If the
Oilers run their power play the way I think they will – with one unit anchored
by left-shot playmaker Connor McDavid and the other anchored by left-shot
playmaker Ryan Nugent-Hopkins – then having a right-shooting point man will
have a lot of value.

Larsson doesn’t have much track record at the NHL level;
he’s played only 150-odd minutes over the last five years. It’s possible there
might be untapped potential there. However, there’s a reason he has played so
little on the man advantage: He ranks 166th
of the 172 NHL defenders to play at least 100 minutes over that span. For
the sake of comparison, Mark Fayne ranked 168th.

Other Possibilities

LD Brandon Davidson. Davidson
owns a hard shot and was a pretty decent scorer in the WHL. He spent most of
his AHL career as a pure defensive defenceman, though, and outside of seven
goals in 11 ECHL games hasn’t contributed much offence at the pro level.
LD Darnell Nurse. Although
Nurse looked more like Ladislav Smid than Larry Murphy in terms of offence last
year, he does have a fine history as a scorer in junior. He topped the 40-point
mark in his draft year and came within a whisker of the point-per-game mark at
the OHL level in 2014-15.
LD Jordan Oesterle. My
guess is that Oesterle won’t make the Oilers out of training camp, but if
anything gives him an edge it will be his puck-moving ability; he excels in
that area like few of Edmonton’s bottom-pairing options. He had 25 points in 44
AHL games a year ago.

It’s easy when looking at this list to understand why this
has been an area of concern this summer. There is a lack of right-shooting
point men, as well as a lack of proven power play talent of any kind. I wonder
a little bit if we’ll see Todd McLellan and Jay Woodcroft do something
unconventional—like a five forward power play—if Peter Chiarelli doesn’t give
them another in-house option.

More likely, though, we’ll just see a lot of Sekera and Klefbom on the man advantage.