The Edmonton Oilers goal scoring will define the team’s 2025-2026 season

For the first time in a long time, the Edmonton Oilers defense might be better than their forward group. Are they going to score enough this year? On today’s edition of Locked On Oilers. [Music] You are Locked On Oilers, your daily podcast on the Edmonton Oilers, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. Hello everyone and welcome to this Wednesday edition of locked on Oilers. I am your host Nick Zerars. This will be my fourth NHL season as a host on the locked on podcast network and I want to thank everyone that is making Locked on Oilers their first listen of the day. Locked on Oilers is available on all the major podcasting platforms YouTube and we’ve got your team covered every day. Today’s episode of Locked On Oilers is brought to you by our friends over at Game Time. Download the Game Time app, create an account, and use code locked on NHL for $20 off your first purchase. So, on today’s show, we are going to get into the nuts and bolts. This is definitely an Excel episode of Locked on Oilers, and we’re going to break it down very simply. We’re going to start with talking about the Oilers goal production from last season, what the numbers say about the 24-2 season. In our second segment, we’re going to pivot to the goal scoring that they lost, that they subtracted from the roster. And then we’re going to talk in the third and final segment the raw math. How many goals do they need to make the playoffs? How many goals are they missing from that total? And where the likely candidates are to replace them. So, I do want to talk about this first in the abstract. So, I make no bones about it. The idea for this episode, and this has been a recurring episode theme throughout my content, regardless of when I’ve been doing Oiler stuff, Ranger stuff, just general hockey stuff, you need to think about scoring enough goals to win enough hockey games to qualify for the playoffs. That’s your first objective. Now, that changes once you get to the postseason and defense and goalending become a bit more pressing. Even though I still would argue you’re better served trying to outscore your problems as opposed to defend or goalend them away just because of the variance involved in having to play perfect defense or have elite goalending. So, I break this down very simply. This is the John Podesta speech. Not John Podesta, Paul D Podesta, excuse me. John Podesta worked for Obama. Paul De Podesta speech from Moneyball where he’s telling Billy Bean, you need to think about winning these games by scoring enough runs to win them. In hockey, we need to score enough goals and we can get a rough number of what it’s going to take to make the playoffs, be considered an elite team, and then based on that, we can make adjustments. So last year, the Edmonton Oilers scored 200 and 20 So last year, 2024, 2025, the Edmonton Oilers had 22 different players record at least one goal in the regular season. Of those 22 players, seven had more than 15 goals. 12 had less than 10 goals. In all situations, the Oilers had 259 goals, which was 11th in the NHL. They had the 14th most five on five goals, 168. And I do want to point this out and I didn’t I forgot about this. The Oilers had a negative goal share in the regular season last year. And I don’t think it’s a huge deal to have a negative goal share in the regular season, especially considering how rough that last month or so of the season was because the Oilers were dealing with all those injuries. They were playing a pretty parsed down lineup that wasn’t at full strength. So, we can take we can look at the context of those numbers and say, well, yes, the opponents outscored them at five on five in the regular season, but we can understand that they had injuries, that they had guys miss time, that they had a bunch of guys regress or play below their career averages, which we’ll get to in a little bit. The next part of this recipe and something that I do find always fascinating when you talk about just Connor and just Leon 206 points combined. And of course a lot of those points overlap with each other. They are not um they are not mutually exclusive. Those 200 some odd points that the Dry Sidle and McDavid combined for. They overlap quite a bit. But where the value comes in, where the understanding of just how important these guys comes in, especially at five on five, is their goal contribution. So the way you would calculate this, you add up all of the McDavid dry points, goals and assists, you get 206. Of those 200, what was it 59? Yeah, 259 overall goals, McDavid and Dryidle contributed on 80% of them. Of the 168 five on-5 goals, McDavid and Dry Cidle contributed on 85% of those. So, of the goals and assists the Oilers scored in at five on five over the course of the regular season, only 15% of that 140 some odd goals was assisted or scored by someone other than Dry Cidle or McDavid. These two guys carry an enormous share of the workload and it’s why the Oilers can afford to roll the dice. And we’ll talk about that more in our second and third segments where we’re going to talk a little bit about what they lost and how they think they might be able to make that off. But make no mistake about it, most teams do not have this aggressive of a goal contribution split throughout their lineup. It’s just not feasible. It’s just not practical. When you are this reliant on one or two players, it really limits your opportunities because as we saw in the Stanley Cup final, especially with Connor and Leon playing together, the Florida Panthers being able to stunt those two when they were played together, it really sapped the rest of the Oilers lineup’s ability to create offense, to create dangerous offense. So, when you can weed that out, generally speaking, you’re going to have a lot of success. Granted, not a lot of teams have the personnel or style of play in conjunction with each other the way Florida does to beat the Oilers the way that Florida did. Look, the Oilers are not a perfect team. Every team, even the Panthers, have deficiencies for the Oilers. It was finding ways to create more dangerous offense, especially when McDavid and Dryidle weren’t on the ice. They couldn’t get to the cycle. They were struggling when they were off the cycle. They couldn’t get the puck between the hashes. they couldn’t create high danger chances even when McDavid and Dry Cidle were out there. So you need to think about it in that respect. How do we score more offense? And of course there is not one way to score. We have yet to have an efficiency revolution in the NHL the way we have in say baseball or basketball or even football to some extent where in baseball walks, home runs, and strikeouts. that your three true outcomes. That is the most efficient way to play because you have the best chance of scoring runs off of home runs. Home runs guaranteed runs cuz everybody runs around the bases. In basketball, we have weeded out inefficient play. The long two is really only in the game if you’re still good at that. You know, if that’s your shot, teams don’t mind you taking that. But the corner three and the layup, the dunk, those are going to be better outcomes because people make them at a higher percentage than those long twos. In football, we know guys want their layups. They want their breadandbut four or five yard gains. And then depending on what the defense does, you’re trying to hit certain things to get the defense to give you other things. You know, there’s a real back and forth give and take. In hockey, there’s no one way to play. If you want to be a uptempo, skill-based offense, you can be successful doing that. If you want to be a cycle, grinded out offense, you can be successful doing that. Now, the Oilers last year blended that together to some degree. I thought when the Oilers were at their best in the postseason late in the Kings series and through the Vegas series is when they had evenly distributed responsibilities throughout their lineup. when they were playing McDavid and Dry Cidle separate from each other or together, when they were playing Nude with Zack Heyman and with Evander Kane and really having a high a high skill third what would effectively on most teams be a checking line but play it in a way that was creating dangerous offense and that’s really your key here. How do you create enough dangerous offense to score enough goals? Now, the Oilers have the luxury of having guys like McDavid and Dry Cidle who can make plays outside of structure, who aren’t as dependent on their shooting metrics, on their chance metrics because they are good enough to outplay their metrics. The average NHL player, the slightly above average NHL player, they are going to be a lot more constrained by environmental factors. The more environmental factors that impact the player, the more you could argue they are less impactful. We are going to take our first break on today’s edition of Lockown Oilers. And when we return, I’m going to break down the subtractions, what the Oilers lost in terms of goal scoring, and what it means going forward, and how the fits might work. Coming up next, so be sure to stick around to this edition of Locked On Oilers, where we’ve got your team covered every day. We’ve all been there. Logging on early and waiting forever for concert tickets to go on sale only to lose your spot or not get tickets at all. Live music should be about making memories, not dealing with the stress of ticket shopping. And that’s where Game Time comes in. Game time makes getting concert tickets faster and easier than ever. Did you know prices actually drop the closer it gets to Showtime? And you can save as much as 60% off with their killer lastminute deals. If you’re tired of the endless scrolling trying to find the best deal, Game Time Zone deals pick the best seats in your section for you. And if you’re wondering what the view is going to look like, Game Time has you covered with the panoramic seat view, which is my personal favorite part of the Game Time ticket experience. And you’re if you’re worried that plans might change, the Game Time Guarantee has you covered with cancellation protection and more. If you’re ready to take the guesswork out of buying concert and show tickets, you need to download the Game Time app. Create an account. Use code locked on NHL to get $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, create an account. Redeem code L O C K E D O NHL for $20 off. Download the Game Time app today. Last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. Thank you to everyone who is hanging out on this Wednesday edition of Locked on Oilers. as we look at hockey as an academic subject. And I I make no bones about it. I I consistently compare hockey to the way I would study history, the way I’d study sociology, anthropology. And this is one of the subjects that irks people. For the conventional hockey people, for the legacy hockey people, they don’t like thinking about hockey just in terms of goals for and goals against because that saps the game of its humanity, of its creativity. that when you reduce players to just numbers, you’re not telling their full story. Whereas, I would argue the numbers are very descriptive in understanding what guys bring to the table. Like we were just talking about at the end of that se that first segment and I’ll we’ll use to segue in here. The vast majority of players are not good enough to play outside of structure. They are not dynamic enough to make plays just for themselves. That is a very rarified error. We are talking about the top two or three percentile of players in the world who are capable of making plays outside of themselves that are aren’t dependent on linemates or defensive partners that aren’t particularly relying on what the defense or the goalie is giving them. They are so unbelievably good. They are oneman offenses. I use that descriptor a lot for Conor McDavid. And if you’re new here, if you’re not an everydayer, when I say someone is a one-man offense, and other guys do this, you know, Jack Hughes does this at a very high level. When Elias Person has been healthy, he does it. Our Tenny Paneran does it. Austin Matthews a little bit to a lesser extent. But when you are capable of getting the puck, whether it’s in your own zone or the neutral zone, and attacking the offensive zone with speed, where you are gaining the zone with speed, you’re putting stress on the defense and the goalie. you are creating space for your linemates to gain the zone because the defense is going to hone in on you because when you are that dynamic, that explosive a skater, defenses are going to respect you more and that’s going to create more opportunities and you can just drive the net yourself if the opportunities there. That’s what I mean by one man offense. And there are plenty of gifted players in the NHL that don’t have the foot speed, that don’t have the puck skills, so they can’t get to that threshold. You know, most guys who play at a reasonably high level have two or three really good traits. If you know, if we’re talking about a McDavid, a Nathan McKinnon, four or five of the five traits we would define as being elite or better. When we’re talking about the Oilers and what they’ve lost, I know a lot of people say, “Well, Jeff Skinner, Victor Arbertson, they didn’t really work out, so there’s not really a whole lot of harm done there.” While neither guy really exploded or popped off, both guys played important roles on last year’s team and just the raw goal total. So, starting at the top, and a lot of people were surprised when we were doing playoff content and you know, we did crossovers with locked on Kings, locked on stars, locked on Golden Knights, Cory Perry was fifth on the team in goals last year in the regular season with 19. And don’t forget the year before, you know, 23 24, Cory Perry wasn’t an every night player. Was last year an extreme outlier for Corey Perry at age 39 to be able to score 19 goals only playing 12 13 minutes per night? Yeah, that is something that is not going to happen again. Barring something weird. Last year, lot of opportunities on the power play and Zack Heyman’s absence. A lot of opportunities to play with Conor McDavid and Leon Dryidle and end of game situations to create more dangerous offense. And we sang Perry’s praises on this podcast during the playoffs. He was arguably the Oilers third or fourth best player for most of the postseason doing a lot of dirty work at the netfront especially in Zack Heyman’s absence after breaking his wrist in the star series. Perry played a really integral role. You know, McDavid and Dry Cidle were the ones who insisted that Chris Knoblock continue to play Cory Perry up there, even though the foot speed and maybe some of the other aspects of the game that would have been better suited for somebody a little more well-rounded, whether that was Pod Kohl’s in a Vander Kane, someone who could force check a little bit more, whereas Perry wasn’t really going to be able to do that all that much. And we continue going on down the line here. You talk about Jeff Skinner 16 goals, sixth on the team. Victor Arverson 15 goals, seventh. Connor Brown 13 goals ninth on the team. While neither none of Perry Skinner Ardson are what we would call dynamic, explosive, you know, none of those guys is a play driver. None of those guys alone is going to be able to make enough offense for themselves that it’s going to raise their linemates. But those are quality supporting cast members that are featured on good teams. And it is integral that no matter how good your superstars are, no matter how good your best players are, regardless if they’re forward or defenseman, that they have quality depth around them to amplify their best traits. You know, a great example of this is the connection that Vasili Pod Coulson and Leon Dryate were able to form last year where D Pud Coulson is not a top six forward. He’s not he does not have the skating, the puck skills. He’s a tenacious forch checker. He hits a lot, but he doesn’t have the puck skills to play with Leon dry cidle. Why did he play so much with Leon? Because he was going to get the puck and getting the puck to dry cidle. That’s what we mean by environmental. Because other guys in that role, and we saw Jeff Skinner there, we saw Vander Kane there at points in the postseason. We saw Trent Frederick there occasionally in the playoffs. When you are on a line with dry cidle, the expectation is you are going to do some of the dirty work because he is so good. It is a waste of his talent and it is a waste of his energy for him to be the one forchecking. And that’s not to say he doesn’t have to. Yes, there are going to be times where your best player is going to have to do some of the dirty work because the other guys on the line just aren’t in a position to make a play. But when you think about this in the abstract, you need to replace 196 15 and 13 goals. So 28 41 you you need to replace upwards of 50 goals, you know, and then you get into some of the other ones where I know Aander Kane wasn’t on the team in the regular season last year, but mathematically you would pencil him in for 20 to 25 goals with relative ease. And you subtract those 20 potential goals from the 60 some odd goals they lost from the four forwards. And then you know you you had one from John Clingberg, you had one from Derek Ryan. Obviously Derk Ryan retiring John Clingberg with the Sharks. Those won’t count even though one each. Worth mentioning when you lose 60 goals plus a capacity for at least 10 to at least 15 to 20 more in a Vander Kane. Replacing 80 goals in a single off season is a lot. That is five or six really solid NHL players. You know, that’s five of what Jeff Skinner and Victor Arverson gave you last year. So, while neither Jeff Skinner or Victor Arbertson I would classify as a successful free agent signing in the conventional sense, they both had a lot of utility. They were very functional players. Did they go above and beyond? No, they weren’t. They were limited in what they did. In Jeff Skinner’s case, he really struggled to earn Chris Knoblock’s trust. So, it made it harder for him to earn more responsibility, to earn more playing time. Think about it like this. While they were imperfect for what they were brought in for, they scored enough, they contributed enough. And look, Jeff Skinner contributed at a really high rate considering the minutes he played. To hit that goal mark to be that high on the team leaderboard is pretty good for a guy who the coach didn’t really trust all that much and missed quite a lot of games for being healthy scratch. So keep that in mind when we’re talking about the Jeff Skinner Edmonton Oilers experience. We are going to take our second final break on today’s edition of Locked on Oilers. When we come back, we’ll tackle how the Oilers replace those numbers. Coming up next, so be sure to stick around. Thank you to everyone who is hanging out on this Wednesday edition of Locked on Oilers as we break down how the Oilers are going to score enough goals to make the playoffs. And I said this last week, I said this earlier in the summer. It’s really weird to feel better about the defense than the forward group. I think there are just simply fewer questions about the defense, and that’s really the impetus for this episode. Sure, the goalending room is more than enough question marks to even if the defense is above average, that it might not bear out that way statistically because there’s just so much variability and how Steuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard perform. So, you can definitely take what I’m saying about the defense with a grain of salt there. But when you have pretty established group, you know, Bard and Ekholm, we’ll see how healthy Ekholm is, but you would assume full summer off. Further removed from that injury, the healthier he’ll be. Darnell Nurse and Jake Walman. And look, I am very hard on Nurse because the contract is not good. But Jake Walman’s a pretty good NHL defenseman. You have Brett Koulak who showed the ability to play pretty much anywhere in the lineup last year. And then you have Troy Ster and Ty Emerson for that last spot. That’s a pretty defined established group. Yeah, that last spot, Ster or Emerson. There’s some conjecture about who’s going to prevail. I personally would like to see them give Emerson a little bit more of a run because he has some cap he has the capacity to probably be a little bit more than he is. And they won’t know unless he plays. So that’s something to keep in mind. But when we’re talking about the Oilers and their offense, we know first of all a lot of guys underperformed their career averages last year. So that’s the first thing when we talk about the Oilers and their regression last year. They had 16 players score fewer goals than their average NHL season. Amongst that group, Connor McDavid, Zack Heyman, Ryan Nent Hopkins, Corey Perry, Jeff Skinner, Victor Arvdson, Connor Brown, Adam Henrik, Vasili Pod Coulson, Darnell Nurse, Kaspari Kaan, all scored under their career averages and goals. And yes, there are a few more, but when we’re talking about, you know, one versus three, not a huge difference, but that is an opportunity for some positive regression. Of course, we can talk about that in terms of context because the Oilers were better defensively as last year went along. And part of being dead defensively is probably being a little bit less aggressive offensively, a little bit more of a focus on defensive responsibility, a little more of focus on good two-way hockey to minimize dangerous offense against. And that comes at the cost of more offense. Do I think there’s more room on some of these guys? Yeah. I think the fact you had a lot of guys like Dry Cidle, I know Dry Cidle led the league in goals. He was over his career average last year. Don’t forget he missed quite a few games down the backstretch of the regular season. McDavid missed quite a few games down the backstretch of the regular season and had that suspension. Zack Heyman missed a a pocket of games both early in the year when they claimed Kaan off of waiverss and then down the backstretch of the regular season. So I think there’s a reasonable case for Jeff for excuse me, not Jeff Skinner, for Zack Heyman to score probably 30 goals. I think if Stu if Jeff SK Jeff Skinner, excuse me, I can’t believe I did that again. If Zack Heyman scores 30 goals, okay, that’s only five out of like the 70 you need to replace, but that’s five. I think Conor McDavid should probably be closer to his career average of 40 goals a season than he was at 26 this year. I think right there you’re looking at 10 to 15 goals in just positive regression from a better environment. I think we can talk about the fact the Oilers power play took a step back year-over-year last year. I think there’s plenty of opportunity there for more goal scoring for Hyman, for McDavid, and for Ryan Net Hopkins. With all three of those guys underperforming their career averages and goals, that would tell you something was off about the environment. I think there’s a strong case to be made that the focus on defensive responsibility, which is a good thing from Chris Knoblock and the power play. Taking a step back probably cost all three of those guys something in the ballpark of four to five goals a piece. Okay, that’s 15 goals off that total. Okay, now you’re down to 15. You brought in Andrew Mioani. His career average in goals is 20. Though that is heavily skewed by his 130 goal season in Calgary. But we can pencil Andrew Mapani in for 15. So really quickly, you’re back. Okay. 35 35 goals is doable. Who has the capacity to help replace that? Well, can Adam Henrique give you two or three more? Can Vasili put Kohl’s give you four or five more? If you really trust him, if you really want to play him with Leon Dryidle, can you get four to five more goals out of Pod Coulson? Okay, then you’re down to 30. Now we’re down to 30. Well, who else in the lineup has the potential? Well, Trent Frederick, he didn’t score a goal in the regular season, but his career average is 13. That’ll get you down to 17 from 30. Okay, we only need 17 goals from Matthew Savois and Ike Howard combined as if they’re both in the lineup at the same time. And then you have David Tomomasek who could potentially be a 5 to 10 goal guy. Really quickly you can get to the math of how the Oilers score enough. Now that some of that is incumbent upon guys doing things they’ve never done before. That is why we are generally more confident in our predictions or projections if you will for guys who have long track records like Zack Heyman underperforming his career average. And look, I know Zack Heyman has the 150 goal season in there. that does skew his goal scoring total a little bit higher than it otherwise would be. I feel reasonably confident that if Zack Heyman is playing first line right wing, if he is on the first power play, he’ll get his shot on goal total back where it needs to be. He will shoot clo he will shoot over his around his career average and shooting percentage and that will get him to 30 goals. That alone is the value of understanding the numbers. I think you can make an argument that maybe at this point in his career, Ryan Nan Hopkins probably isn’t going to be a 20 to 25 goal guy. And that’s not the end of the world, but that is something you do need to account for in our roster construction and our preparation. Where else could the Oilers make up goals? I’m glad you asked. Jake Walman, a full season of Jake Walman who can score something in the ballpark of 8 to 10. Again, that’s not a huge number, 10 goals, but from a defenseman, okay, that’s an upper quartile player. You add that in the spot where you would have had Brett Koulak. Koulak who was over his career average in goal totals last year and you slide Koulak down a spot into a lower point in the lineup. Okay, he’s not going to have as many minutes so he won’t have as many shots on goals so he won’t score as many goals. But Jake Walman should be able to help drive offense to create more offense. And that’s really the key here. The Oilers at five on five last year. They left meat on the bone. They were outscored at five on five. They left meat on the bone on the power play. And when you have both of those, when you have guys who who histo underperformed their historic averages, their production all together at the same time, that tells you it was something about the environment. Whether, like we’ve said, it’s the Chris Knobblock defense focus or if it’s the power play regressing, the opportunity for just positive regression to make up a lot of this goal difference is there. Then you account for the unknown. Tomasac, Ike Howard, Savois, you can get 15 to 20 goals from those three guys. I don’t think that’s crazy. I don’t know about you guys. You let me know in the comments. Do you think asking for Savvois, Howard, and Tomask to combine for 15 20 goals in conjunction with the positive regression of Hyman, McDavid, Nan Hopkins, maybe Henrique, Jake, a full season of Jake Walman, a full season of Trent Frederick. That seems like the math is working there. And look, I know these are based on projections, that these are educated guesses, that these are based on statistics, and you could have an extreme outlier. Maybe you get a 40 goal season from Zack Heyman, maybe you get a 20goal season from Zack Heyman. Those are both well within the range of potential outcomes. The key here when we’re talking about this from a construction standpoint, a roster building standpoint, how realistic is what you need? If the Oilers needed 40 goals from Howard, Tomascen, so I’d be very nervous because that’s a lot to ask of guys who don’t have the NHL experience. 15 to 20 for three guys, I think that’s reasonable. You think about the capacity for those guys to play alongside a McDavid, play along a dry cidle, that’s a chance to get maybe a little bit more out of them than you thought you might be able to at least to start out. That’s how you think about this. That’s how I think about this when we’re in the off season and we’re talking about just purely evaluating the roster. Goals in, goals out, what’s the difference? Who can make up that difference? Who’s left? That’s the key here. But that will do it for today’s math heavy edition of Locked On Oilers. I want to thank everyone that made Lockown Oilers their first listen of the day. Locked on Oilers is a part of the Locked On podcast network. We’ve got your team covered every day. Be sure to check out Locked On NHL and Locked On NHL Game Night over on the Locked On NHL feeds wherever you get your podcast or over on YouTube. I will talk to you guys tomorrow. Until then, let’s go Boilers.

For the first time in a long time, the Edmonton Oilers might have a better defense than forward group. But can they still score enough to win?

In this episode of Locked On Oilers, Nick Zararis breaks down:

Last season’s goal production

Key players lost and what they contributed

How many goals Edmonton needs to make the playoffs

Where those goals could come from this year

From positive regression to unsung depth contributors, we crunch the numbers to see if Edmonton can still be an elite offensive team—even without some of last year’s scorers.

0:00 Intro: Oilers defense may outperform forwards

5:43 McDavid and Draisaitl’s massive goal contributions

11:21 Analyzing player performance within team structure

16:56 Replacing 60-80 goals lost in offseason

22:34 Potential for positive regression in scoring

27:38 Outro: Evaluating roster changes and goals

The Edmonton Oilers goal scoring will define the team’s 2025-2026 season

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8 comments
  1. I believe inevitably the Oilers will fall short of a Stanley Cup final, and that they will do so during this coming season or either of the subsequent two. Three seasons ago the Oilers fell short of a Stanley Cup final via a loss of a conference semifinal to the Golden Knights in six games.

  2. Nick Zardari's, out of the gate, mathematically proved that the Oilers are a two-man team. Last year, only 15% of the scoring came from players other than McDavid and Draisaitl… and that other teams in the league don't do this.

  3. It's also worth pointing out that the guys the Oilers brought in this summer are all 5'9" tall, finnese players (Howard, Lavoie and Mangiapani). Two of which are also rookies. As rookies, they'll probably be held to 30 points each, max. As short, small framed finesse-style players, they'll have better regular seasons than playoffs… and that's if they all work out. They also might wind up being scratched. My underlying point is that from my perspective, the Oilers seem to have regressed, at least for this upcoming season. Maybe if those new players flourish, they'll be back at it in a few seasons. The question is whether or not McDavid sees that as "an opportunity to repeatedly win". I'd say it's not. Neither are the zero changes made in the goaltending position.

  4. Howards good for 40+ goals if hes given impactful minutes including Special Teams work. Calder lock on Goals alone…. no one sees it coming… but hes Family and theres a genetic variable in play. Sola Virtus Invicta. "Ike" will be a Sleeper like King Leon was…. he has slipped under the Radar a little bit….

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