The Edmonton Oilers might fire coach Jay Woodcroft after the team started their season with one of the worst records in the NHL. Whether he is the problem or not is a completely separate question.
Jay Woodcroft in Hot Seat
To say the Edmonton Oilers have underperformed so far this season is to embarrass the English with your understatement. Chosen by many prognosticators as Canada’s best bet to end their Stanley Cup drought, they have stumbled badly.
While hockey is notoriously fickle, involving a higher ratio of luck than other sports, the Oilers plummetting to last place is still a shock. Their loss to the San Jose Sharks may not have placed them technically at the bottom of the league, that’s not a distinction worth noting.
November 9th won’t be the sole cause of Woodcroft’s firing, but it is an obvious low point. There is no way to reconcile any team with Stanley Cup aspirations tied in the standings with the historically bad Sharks. Not beyond the first few games of the season. Deservedly or not, the second-year coach could pay for it.
What Happened?
Looking at the numbers beyond the usual boxcars, the most notable thing is just how good the Oilers are. Yes, good.
While Connor McDavid is obviously dealing with some kind of health issue, he still started the season with ten points in ten games. Leon Draisaitl reached 15 in 12, Zach Hyman hit 10 in 12. Even Evan Bouchard, for as much criticism as he’s received, is playing to his strength with three goals and 11 points in 12 games.
More interesting than that is the level of shot control the team has had. There are just three players – THREE – with a Corsi below 50%. And none of them have played every game. In fact, the Oilers have more players controlling 60% or more of the shots while they’re on the ice – five. And another three are at or above 59%.
Their team shooting percentage isn’t that great, a couple points below league average. It’s hard to lay that at the feet of Jay Woodcroft, though. He can’t actually shoot for the players.
The power play is decent, if not reaching the Death-From-Avove level of last year. Their penalty kill is flat-out bad, but it was mediocre last season and the team wasn’t collapsing then. But that does tell us where to look. The PDO – shot percentage + save percentage, which is an approximator for “luck” – of the team after 12 games is a miserable 95.1.
The shooting has been bad, but the goaltending has been absolutely atrocious. However, that’s not the whole story.
Jay Woodcroft ‘s Net Negative
Last season, the Oilers were pretty much middle-of-the-road as far as goals against. They finished 16th in a league of 32, so it’s tougher to get more average than that. Stuart Skinner had something of a coming-out party, playing 50 games with a .913 save percentage. For a team scoring as much as Edmonton, that was plenty.
Jack Campbell, brought in to mentor Skinner and be his safety net, had a worse showing. His .888 SV% was bad for a starter, but as a backup was… still bad, but not fatal. He still won 21 of his 36 games. It was a bad start to his new 5x$5 million contract, but combined the team was spending $7.5 million on their goaltending. Not great, but manageable.
Skinner’s numbers collapsed in the playoffs, unfortunately, even as Woodcroft stuck with him. The high-scoring team managed to get them to 12 playoff games, but an .883 save percentage doomed them. That provided ammunition for the team’s usual critics from pundits and fans alike.
Brand New Song, Same Old Refrain
One criticism Edmonton has constantly heard during the Connor McDavid era is that they don’t play well enough defensively. It’s a refrain that has echoes for years now, and with McDavid going from frustrated to tired, that needed correcting.
General Manager Ken Holland has brought in a number of players to try fixing this. Smaller signings of “defensive specialists” like Brett Kulak and Cody Ceci to huge swings on Darnell Nurse and Matthaias Ekholm are now on the blue line. Responsible forwards have been added as well, with Connor Brown and Mattias Janmark brought in.
Thing is, Woodcroft recognizes the flaw in his team’s play. The man may be new to the NHL, but he’s no fool. He had an excellent record as head coach in Bakersfield and got the Oilers to the Conference Finals when he took over from Dave Tippett in 2022. Woodcroft didn’t get 50 wins last season by accident.
What he did do this season is add a new system, focussing more on defensive play. The idea seems to be about cutting down on low plays in the defensive zone while stretching outlet passes. Ideally, this would keep the strength of the team – offence – readily available.
After twelve games, the end result has been chaos.
Scapegoat, Inc.
Fingers are pointed to second-year goaltender Skinner and the shouldn’t-have-been-signed-for-five Campbell. But the more serious issue is time. No, Campbell isn’t good enough to be a starter in the NHL right now. Sending him to the AHL is a good option, though he should probably step away from the sport entirely for a week.
Calling up Calvin Pickard might help stem the tide a bit, simply because he’s been excellent in Bakersfield so will be playing with confidence. His 116 NHL games experience will keep him cool under fire – even one as hot as Edmonton right now. His time in Bakersfield didn’t overlap with Jay Woodcroft, but at this point, it probably wasn’t Woodcroft’s call.
It’s difficult to lay the team’s miserable results at Skinner’s feet, either. He hasn’t been making The Big Save(tm) during games, but he shouldn’t be faced with a dozen every night, either. The Oilers’ defensive zone has been an absolute fire drill, with players either not sure who they’re covering or trying to compensate for someone else’s missed check.
The sheer number of shots coming from directly in front of the net is ridiculous. Look at the goals scored against and as often as not you’ll find the boards lined with blue and orange jerseys and panicked faces. The team is unprepared for things to go wrong, so one slip can cause a cascade of errors each compounding the others.
This really is one place where using the eye test tells more of the story than the statistics – or the publicly available ones, anyway.
What to Do
A first step has already been done, with Campbell getting exchanged for Pickard. In the past, a trade may have been done to “shake things up” but that is a pre-salary cap tactic. And, in the long and short, the issue isn’t talent. Or not in the way we usually think of talent equalling skills.
If talent alone was what won games in the NHL, the Cup would have made its way to Alberta this century. Running down the player list shows more – sometimes far more – talent than most other teams. Sure, there are weak points, but everyone has those, too, and somehow managed to hit double digits in the standings.
The Oilers are fragile right now. They have often come out of the locker room buzzing, dominating the start of games. But when they aren’t rewarded for it, doubt creeps in and you can see it. Hesitancy to pursue pucks, or else reckless abandon. Easily distracted players get pulled out of position or start chasing hits and taking penalties.
There are a few options for the team to take. None of them are certain, of course, but a decision has to come soon.
Change Everything
The boldest move would be plenty of bold moves. Unfortunately, the team is rife with no-trade and no-move clauses. Between those and the very limited cap space the team has, there’s little chance of altering the on-ice personnel by much.
Buying out Campbell next Summer would give some cap relief, so his contract isn’t as burdensome as it first seems. But the team taking him on needs to be paid for the Oilers getting sudden cap relief. There are plenty of gaps in their upcoming draft picks, but the team is playing for now, not later.
Evan Bouchard, a very talented offensive defenceman under fire for his defensive play, would be a big piece to move. But if the team wants a return that helps them right now – in net, for instance – then he’s an unprotected asset.
Fire the Coach
And replace him with who? There are few veterans available without baggage of their own. Mike Babcock or Joel Quenneville would be public relations disasters. Darryl Sutter, while a hilarious choice, isn’t exactly known as a player’s coach even if he is interested in this train wreck. Bruce Boudreau is probably good with retirement for now.
The most obvious choice in-house is Glen Gulutzan. He has NHL head coaching experience with both the Calgary Flames and Dallas Stars, but if the team wants a clean slate he’s gone, too. And if he’s not a big change from Jay Woodcroft, why bother?
Run Away! Run Away!
Keeping Woodcroft but abandoning all the stylistic changes they’ve tried. That involves changing the playbook again, and this time mid-season. A very rare approach for any coaching staff, as they made changes in the first place because what they had wasn’t working.
If there’s a coaching change, then the plays are all going to be different anyway. But the players can’t be impressed with a supposed leader correcting their own corrections after such a brief period. That leads us to the last option.
Wild Rose Coloured Glasses
No changes except minor ones. Everything is going according to plan – it’s just that the plan is a year early. When the plans finally *click* for the players (and McDavid is healthy again) then Boy, Howdy! You just watch this team go!
Oddly enough, this may be the best choice of the lot. While most teams are difficult to picture coming back from such a deficit, look over the talent level of the Oilers. If any team can replicate the St. Louis Blues “Worst-to-First” season, it’s these guys. Again, Jay Woodcroft has had a successful track record, not only in other leagues but with this team specifically.
They just need everything to *click*.
Main Photo: Walter Tychnowicz-USA TODAY Sports
