How the Avs are dominating the Oilers

Travis Yost

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With a win Saturday night at Rogers Place, the Colorado Avalanche took a commanding 3-0 series lead over the Edmonton Oilers. For Jay Woodcroft’s team, it’s kitchen sink time.

Can the Oilers claw their way back into this series? You never say never in the NHL – after all, it’s one of the few North American sports leagues that has seen playoff comebacks from three-game deficits. But this is a unique challenge for Woodcroft’s team. If not because of how magnificent the Avalanche look top to bottom, then because of what’s happening within the Oilers’ lineup.

If we do a premortem on where it’s went wrong for the Oilers over the first three games, three statistical indicators stand out. In no particular order:

1. The Avalanche are dominating the Oilers at even strength.
2. The relative dominance of Connor McDavid has declined.
3. Mike Smith’s play has sharply regressed.

There are surely other factors (the Oilers are dealing with some injuries, and the penalty differential has been favourable to the Avalanche) at play. But for the sake of this piece, let’s focus on the three broader components.

Avalanche domination at even strength 

We knew going into the series the Oilers would be undermanned – this is still a relatively top-heavy lineup against perhaps the deepest team in the league, and their path to success was another supernova performance from their star forwards. Beneath the surface, Oilers skaters have mostly had their clocks cleaned.

Colorado is obviously a unique opponent. Against Los Angeles, Edmonton had a surefire talent advantage and it showed. Against Calgary, the Oilers’ defence did a robust job keeping the Flames to the outside despite bigger shot deficits, and the tempo of their transition game was too much for Calgary to handle.

We’re seeing the same shot deficits against Colorado, but plenty of those shots are coming from dangerous areas, and Edmonton’s defensive and goaltending combinations are offering little resistance (numbers are score adjusted to deal with score effects):

You can see the rate at which Colorado’s offence is in front of more meaningful attacking sequences, both on a volume basis and quality basis. If we look at each skater’s rate expected-goals (blind to goaltending performance – more on that in a moment) over the first three games of the series, you see a stack of Avalanche skaters at the top of the leaderboard. Notably, it’s Colorado’s middle-six forwards doing a lot of the damage here.

Injuries to Andre Burakovsky and, more recently, Nazem Kadri (now out long-term due to injury) will force head coach Jared Bednar to continue blendering his lines, but the Avalanche forwards are very versatile and the majority can move up and down the lineup without missing a beat. They play very up-tempo, and against a blueline that is as turnover-friendly as the Oilers are right now, that’s like pouring gasoline over a fire.

So, problem number one: you aren’t winning the territorial battle.

The relative dominance of Connor McDavid has waned

In the above chart, McDavid has been the deadliest attacker for the Oilers by a considerable margin. That’s not a surprise. And he’s still the best player on the ice in this series, again by a considerable margin. But his relative dominance – measured by what we are seeing versus Colorado as opposed to what we saw against Calgary and Los Angeles – has declined.

This is notable, because the Oilers are so reliant on McDavid’s line creating a big margin of error for the rest of the lineup. Remember Edmonton’s first-round series against Los Angeles? Without the big McDavid margins, the Oilers likely lose. 

Here are McDavid’s numbers through the first three games of the series. For context, McDavid saw most of his road minutes against the Cale Makar pairing and the Nathan MacKinnon line. In Game 3, Woodcroft managed to get McDavid out more against Colorado’s middle-six forwards, and away from MacKinnon.

The Makar pairing and Colorado’s top three lines have done as good a job as you could have against a player like McDavid. And Colorado’s lineup versatility allows them to throw rotations of bodies at the McDavid problem – a luxury few other teams around the league have.

During Game 1, I thought Colorado was taken aback by the sheer speed of the Oilers’ top-six forwards, and more specifically the McDavid line. If you watched Games 2 and 3, you saw a much more concerted effort to put a box around McDavid, especially as he transitioned through the neutral zone or tried to enter the offensive third.

The effort has not only reduced the efficacy of the McDavid line offensively, but it has also allowed the Avalanche to pin the McDavid line into the defensive zone. That’s something Los Angeles and Calgary were unable to do.

Mike Smith’s play has sharply regressed

This is a longstanding concern. Smith is 40 years old, and his play has, unsurprisingly, moved to the downside as he’s aged. He was terrific in the opening round, and so-so against Calgary. The Oilers, at a talent disadvantage, either needed to dominate the shot clock against Colorado (very unlikely) or win the goaltending battle (more plausible).

Not only have they been sizably outchanced, but the goaltending has also been heinous. Anytime you combine those two factors, winning a hockey game gets extraordinary difficult. But like McDavid, on relative terms, it’s been ugly. Just look how disappointing the performance has been here even relative to average expectations:

Some of this is not Smith’s fault. Players like Darnell Nurse and Duncan Keith have been turnover machines and seemingly can’t deal with Colorado’s pace; it’s opened the flood gates for the Avalanche offence to work its way inside, and more importantly, get Smith moving post to post.

But Smith hasn’t been able to erase much.

Too much time in the defensive zone, McDavid’s line cooling off just a touch, and goaltending capitulation in a matter of three games. Woodcroft’s team needs at least one, perhaps two of these components to turn around in Game 4.

If not, Edmonton is going to be heading into a very frustrating off-season.

Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey